Roadblocks straight ahead
With holiday break over, topranked UConn ready to dive into business
STORRS — Megan Walker prefers playing in games to participating in practice, which, if you ask her, is pretty ordinary.
She’ll get her wish over the next month as UConn’s schedule ramps up in both intensity and volume. In January alone, the Huskies are slated to play 11 games over a span of 29 days, beginning Thursday against Wichita State in Hartford (7 p.m.).
The stretch figures to be a test of endurance and willpower for the topranked Huskies, who returned to practice Saturday following a fiveday break for the holidays.
“Having those days off, it’s always nice for our bodies to relax and have some time at home, but now it’s business,” senior forward Kyla Irwin said Wednesday.
American Athletic Conference play doesn’t figure to be particularly challenging — UConn is 1210 within the conference over the last seven seasons — but sprinkled in this month are games against No. 6 Baylor ( Jan. 9) and No. 22 Tennessee ( Jan. 23), as well as an exhibition versus the U.S. national team ( Jan. 27).
It won’t get much easier in February with No. 2 Oregon (Feb. 3) and No. 4 South Carolina (Feb. 10) waiting for UConn early in the month.
“We just have to lock in,” Walker said. “For the younger guys, they just have to stay motivated. It’s going to be a quick month.”
Coach Geno Auriemma has found that keeping players laserfocused when they are off from school can be tough. Downtime sometimes lends itself to distractions.
“It’s kind of a difficult time, I think, for everybody,” Auriemma said.
“There’s so much dead time. There’s a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. There’s no classes to go to and there’s nobody on campus. It’s more about keeping people mentally engaged and focused on what we’re trying to do.”
Fortunately, Auriemma is confident that, given the schedule that’s coming up, he won’t run into any issues with this particular team.
“Some teams, every day you go to practice, they improve a lot. They look forward to practice. Then some teams, they’re not great practice teams, they’d rather play games,” Auriemma said. “The team that we have this year is more of a playinthegame kind of team, which probably plays into their hands that we have so many games coming up.”
The Huskies haven’t played since Dec. 22, when they routed Oklahoma 9753 to improve to 100. Since then, they’ve taken over the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press Top25 poll, leapfrogging Stanford.
Auriemma — who missed the victory over the Sooners after undergoing surgery to alleviate symptoms of diverticulitis — is still somewhat amazed that this team, considering its lack of depth and experienced scorers, is sitting atop the poll. Granted, the Huskies own a record 11 national titles and were ranked No. 1 longer than anyone over the last decade (111 weeks), but times have changed.
“In 2010, we were No. 1, 2 and 3,” Auriemma said, referring to the team that went 390 and won the national championship behind superstars Maya Moore and Tina Charles. “I felt really good in 2010. We had the best team, we had the second best team and we had the third best team.
I don’t know that that exists today.”
Regardless, the Huskies sure would like to stay No. 1. With a brutal gauntlet of games awaiting them the next month, they know they can’t afford to slip up.
“A lot of it is just mentally staying focused and knowing what we have to do is what we have to do,” Irwin said. “We’re coming into practice every day with the mindset that we might be tired, we might be sore but we’re here to do something. We’ve got to stay focused on that.”
On the mend: Junior Evina Westbrook underwent surgery on her left knee on Tuesday — the same one on which she had microfracture surgery in June. Westbrook is sitting out the season after transferring from Tennessee but is expected to be ready for the 202021 campaign.