The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Running on empty
Injuries, fatigue finally catch up to Huskies
All the injuries and mental fatigue that come with balancing a short bench and playing a packed schedule finally caught up to UConn women’s basketball.
The Huskies showed Wednesday they are tired, both physically and mentally.
After falling to South
Carolina on Sunday, the team just couldn’t keep up in a historic loss at Marquette Wednesday night.
For the first time in nearly 30 years, UConn has lost consecutive games. A streak of 1,083 straight games without consecutive losses now snapped. A streak that started when none of the current Huskies were even alive. Per ESPN, the team with the longest active streak now without back-to-back losses is Gonzaga women’s basketball with 204 straight games.
It’s a stunning stat that we may never see again in the sport.
“When people read that stat and they look back, that’s a fairy tale stat,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma told SNY after Wednesday’s game. “And all fairy tales, they don’t always come true, and everything has an end, right? So, this ended here at Marquette.”
But how did the Huskies get to this point? Why did it all fall apart at Marquette?
Having back-to-back seasons littered with injuries is a big reason, but not the only one.
The Huskies have played with eight available players for the past six games. They’ve only played one game this year (Nov. 14 vs Texas) with all 10 active players available on the court. With Azzi Fudd, Caroline Ducharme, Paige Bueckers and Ice Brady on the sideline, that’s at least an estimated 40-plus points sitting on the bench with injuries.
On the flip side of the injury issue is the lack of
depth. UConn has just three available subs: sophomore Amari DeBerry, and freshmen Ayanna Patterson and Inês Bettencourt. But apparently none of them have proven to Auriemma and the coaching staff that they can positively impact the team during tight situations. All are averaging less than three points and three rebounds per game.
Because of that, it’s clear Auriemma’s trust lies mostly with his starters to get the job done. However, that puts a heavy workload on those five players (all five are averaging at least 32 minutes or more per game). That workload intensified during this January-February stretch of tough nonconference and Big East games.
The Huskies played seven games in a 12-day span. That included tough, tight and physical battles against Villanova and at Tennessee’s hostile rivalry atmosphere. On Sunday, against No. 1 South Carolina, the Huskies kept up with the reigning national champs the entire game. There were five ties in the third quarter and UConn ultimately only lost by four.
But all those minutes against physical opponents puts stress on the players’ bodies and their physical fatigue quickly becomes mental.
And that all came to a tipping point in Milwaukee.
As former Husky and SNY analyst Megan Culmo said in Wednesday’s TV broadcast, the Huskies fell for “the trap game.”
Before Wednesday, UConn had only lost once to a conference opponent in the last 10 years. While the Huskies have had trouble in Wisconsin before, they had never lost to the Golden Eagles. On paper, Wednesday’s game was assumed to be a quick win for the Huskies — especially coming off the high of playing South Carolina and having the motivation to avenge Sunday’s loss.
But that wasn’t the case. About halfway through the first quarter, it was clear Marquette was playing more cohesive, smarter and more energized than the Huskies.
“After the week that we’ve had, after the 10 days, two weeks, whatever, I think mentally all of us, no one in particular, I think we just checked out,” Auriemma said. “And it was a major struggle because they were so locked in on their team in what they wanted to do and what they wanted to run and how they wanted to run. And all the credit to them because they were really really good.”
UConn made turnover after turnover. While the Golden Eagles stole the ball 12 times (the second most steals UConn has allowed an opponent all season), a good portion of the
Huskies’ turnovers came from poor decision-making. Passes to the wrong player too late, rushed shots and poorly set screens.
Marquette’s defense completely shut down the Huskies’ offense. The Golden Eagles played tight defense and kept the Huskies off the perimeter. UConn made just 3 of 13 3point attempts. Lou Lopez Sénéchal (UConn’s active lead 3-point shooter) went 0 of 1 from deep – just the second game this season she was only able to take one shot from the arc.
Sure, the Huskies were able to tie the game halfway through the third quarter and entered the fourth just down by one, but it wasn’t enough. Instead of turning their energy into aggression, frustration began to seep in. Four starters ended with three or more turnovers with the team finishing with 19.
At the end of the game, Auriemma called it a complete mental checkout from his players. Sure, the Huskies have lost twice already this season being shorthanded (Dec. 4 at Notre Dame and Dec. 11 at Maryland), but Wednesday was different.
“I don’t know if it was a residue from Sunday, whether something at practice yesterday, something on the trip over, but there was a collective something different about today and it had all the signs of (Auriemma ran his hand over his face to demonstrate blankness),” he said. “There would be things that we would say on the bench, like say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re gonna do. When this happens, this is gonna happen. This is how we’re gonna go.’ And then when we’d go out, it would be completely opposite and that’s never happened this year.
“I mean on occasion it’s happened but not that consistently over and over again. And that’s when you know mentally, they’re just not here. And God bless them, I don’t know how they’ve done it this long, to be honest with you.”
It was the second time a top-5 ranked team fell at an unranked opponent this week. Then-No. 2 Stanford fell 72-67 at Washington on Sunday. The loss dropped the Cardinal four spots in Monday’s poll.
UConn only has two days before its next game: a road trip to Georgetown on Saturday (5 p.m./ SNY). Two days that will feature two plane rides and likely minimal rest time.
The Huskies will need to find a solution to their fatigue or else their standing atop the Big East (UConn is currently No. 1 with a 13-1 record with Villanova next at 12-2) and their top-five ranking (UConn moved up to No. 4 after its tight loss to South Carolina) will be at risk.