UConn enjoys best all-around performance in win over Pirates

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — The UConn women’s basketball team’s 15-point win over Georgetown Sunday was sloppy, rough, and just not up to the program’s standard.

There were 23 turnovers and the Huskies shot 41.3% (19 of 46) from the floor while converting just 5 of 16 3-point attempts (31.3%).

But two days later, UConn did a complete “180” against Seton Hall despite playing without star sophomore Azzi Fudd. UConn shot a season-best 66.7% from the 3point line and tied its season-low of 10 turnovers, beating the Pirates by 45 — the largest victory over Seton Hall since winning by 60 in 2013.

While the team will continue to wait to hear Fudd’s diagnosis after she suffered an apparent right knee injury on Sunday, the Huskies can exhale knowing they’ve learned how to get the best out of whoever is available on any given day.

On Tuesday night, they had just seven players available.

“When you’re sitting there thinking about what could have been … then to all of a sudden to have it just kind of disappear. Little by little. One at a time almost. It gets depressing if you dwell on it,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “You have to work really really hard to not think of it as defeating, ‘I don’t have any choices. I don’t have any options.’

“But you do. You have five players that are gonna play. You got two kids on the bench that are available for you to sub. And now you got to figure out how you can make the most out of that. And you can wish anything else, you can hope you rather had this, you wish you rather had that, but the reality of it is, this is what we got.”

Against the Hoyas Sun

day, the Huskies tied their season-low with 15 assists and their shooting percentage from the floor was their second-worst of the year.

The players may have struggled after seeing Fudd leave the court in the final minutes of the second half and immediately walk into the locker room after another knee injury, but point guard Nika Mühl said it was more than that.

Mühl said the team didn’t have its normal energy during shootaround that morning and that translated to the game. Auriemma agreed, and said he noticed the team’s lack of effort in practice the day before.

“Games like Sunday happen. You don’t know why. You don’t try to explain it. You just move on from it,” he said. “… It’s not anything that caught anybody by surprise, and it was a good lesson. But there was no trying to analyze the whole thing to death. It was just, you know it was lousy. I know it was lousy. And we can’t have that happen. And that was it. And, you know, everything that we’ve done since Sunday has been really good.”

The Huskies looked completely different Tuesday despite not having Fudd in the building (the sophomore did not make the trip and was undergoing testing on her knee back in Connecticut).

Aaliyah Edwards tied her career-high with three steals and had two big steal-and-score plays. Dorka Juhász and Aubrey Griffin led with 22 points each, while Juhász recorded her fourth-straight double-double. Mühl recorded her seventh game this year with double-figure assists with 13.

“Tonight, was just one of those where everything felt right,” Auriemma said. “For as bad as we were on Sunday in our flow of the game and our attention to detail and just our whole look; we were 180 today and just really on top of our game.”

All seven available Huskies scored including sophomore Amari DeBerry who finished with career highs in points (13), rebounds (8) and minutes (20). Her on-the-ground-behind-the-back assist to Inês Bettencourt made SportsCenter’s Top 10 best plays of the day.

“Hopefully, little by little we get the best parts of Amari, but she’s got to get more physical, and she’s got to get more aggressive in what she does,” Auriemma said. “And that’s what’s keeping her from playing more minutes. And if she were able to do that, do more of what she did today, do less of some of the other stuff, she would play more minutes and she would be able to help us.”

After setting its seasonlow in turnovers (10) last Wednesday against St. John’s, UConn’s errors were double that on Sunday. Yet, on Tuesday at Seton Hall, the Huskies had again gotten them under control.

“I feel like the other teams would rush us and honestly, we would just rush ourselves sometimes without the other team doing anything,” Mühl said Saturday. “So, I feel like us, individually, is the reason that we had so many turnovers and me, as the leader of the turnovers the past few games. So just like (putting) the emphasis on like, no rush, keeping it together. And I feel like also getting people back helped a lot because our minds were clear. We were more focused because we know we had more energy.”

UConn will get a couple of days of rest this week before hosting Butler at noon on Saturday.

While Fudd’s status is unclear at this point, the Huskies may be getting close to returning Ayanna Patterson. The freshman suffered a concussion against Xavier on Jan. 5. She’s sat out the past three games due to concussion protocols but participated in pregame warmups dressed in uniform on Tuesday as part of her recovery. Caroline Ducharme is also out with a concussion.

UConn will need as many healthy bodies as it can get when they face DePaul on Monday and Tennessee in Knoxville next Thursday.

“Hopefully we can carry this momentum in the next couple of weeks,” Auriemma said.