The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Walker steals the show on road
Freshman had 11 points in the 2nd quarter of victory over No. 5 UCLA
LOS ANGELES — Geno Auriemma watched Diana Taurasi miss every shot she took in her first road game at UConn. More recently, Katie Lou Samuelson had two points in 17 minutes in her first collegiate road game, so UConn’s Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach wasn’t sure what he was going to get from his current hotshot freshman, Megan Walker.
What Auriemma didn’t expect to see was Walker make all four of her shots in the second quarter, including a pair of 3-pointers 45 seconds apart, to spark the Huskies’ impressive win over No. 5 UCLA in front of 9,263, the thirdlargest women’s basketball crowd in Pauley Pavilion history.
“She struggled so much in practice that we thought it was going to take her a long time, she was struggling to find ‘What am I good at?’ ” Auriemma said. “One thing she’s good at is corner 3s. The problem is she starts taking every 3; every time she touches the ball she shoots it because she doesn’t know what else to do, she doesn’t have confidence in her game. (Against UCLA) she kind of stayed with what she’s good at; she’s too good to not contribute, but (Tuesday’s performance) came out of nowhere because she’s been struggling in practice.”
Walker is the most recent of the national high school players of the year
to land at UConn. Tamika Williams was the first and she also played her first true road game at UCLA, finishing with 17 points, but that 1998 game was not a top-five showdown; UCLA was ranked 14th, so there wasn’t nearly as much pressure on Williams to produce. Walker was thrown into a tough spot as the only reserve Auriemma was hoping to have to call upon as the Huskies were playing without injured All-American Katie Lou Samuelson, and fellow All-American Gabby Williams sat for most of the second quarter after picking up her second foul.
UCLA was only down seven when Walker hit a jumper with 7:19 left in the first half. Later, she made three 3-pointers in a span of 93 seconds to give the Huskies an 11-point lead. The Bruins would not get closer than eight points the rest of the way.
“Practice has been a little bit of a struggle but I knew we were down one soldier without Lou,” Walker said. “We had a couple of meetings and he (Auriemma) emphasized that me and Azurá (Stevens) need to step up and I feel like this was a perfect game to show it.
“Once you see it go in, it’s just a mental thing. I came off another down screen in the corner, I just took my time, lined it up and knocked it in. Then after the second one, I kind of felt it a little bit; the third one there was no hesitation.”
The biggest concern for the Huskies coming into the game was a lack of depth. Stevens started her second straight game in place of the injured Samuelson. Auriemma didn’t go to his bench in the first quarter but once Williams was called for her second foul, he summoned Walker off the bench.
“We found another player who can help us,” Auriemma said. “She waited until the biggest moment of her career so far, it’s a young career but this is it, the toughest game in the toughest environment and she played her best game. We came out here with Napheesa (Collier) getting better and Megan earning some trust of her teammates and the coaching staff, those are maybe more important than the win.”
Auriemma is pushing Walker to do more than just hit open jumpers. He would have liked more than one defensive rebound from her in 25 minutes against UCLA, and defensively, when Walker came into the game Auriemma switched to a zone because he doesn’t have a ton of confidence in the one-on-one defensive abilities of either Walker or Stevens.
“Without Gabby in the game in the first half, that was tough because now we have Z (Stevens) and Megan and they are — to say the least — defensively challenged,” Auriemma said. “We were trying to figure out what was the easiest thing we could do. We tried to keep it very simple. I could tell we had them thinking a little bit because they slowed down and weren’t in any kind of flow. You could see that they were struggling to find where their offense was going to come from. I thought our guys were great defensively, they were just great.”