NEW YORK — There was Sarah Strong tipping balls loose, then gaining control of them as if using a magnet. There was no sleight of hand for Blanca Quinonez, when she saw the chance, she just ripped the ball out of someone’s hands.
All over the Barclays Center court Saturday, the UConn women were applying sophisticated pressure, causing chaos and committing pre-holiday larceny. They stole the ball 17 times, they forced 26 turnovers, they stole everything but the roast beast and the last can of “Who” hash to beat another ranked team, No. 11 Iowa, by 26 points.
“Then [Geno Auriemma] added a full-court pressure,” Iowa coach Jan Jensen said, after UConn’s 90-64 win in the Women’s Champions Classic. “He didn’t press from the get-go, right away every time, but he has a run-and-jump, he has full-court pressure, they trap the inbounds, sometimes they let you have it in, sometimes they don’t let you have it in, and it just wreaks havoc.
“A lot of teams, when they full-court press, they drop their shoulders when you advance it and get it over (midcourt), they do not. They get you across half-court and then they get a little bit more intense, that’s what impresses me.”
Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong combine for 50 points as UConn women’s basketball routs Iowa 90-64
For arriving only recently to the UConn experience, this may seem like a new wrinkle. But the top-ranked Huskies, now 12-0 with only more of the same appearing on the horizon, are just getting back to using one of the main ingredients of Auriemma’s six unbeaten teams: Relentless defense. Now that he is not trying to nurse six or seven healthy players through 40 minutes, avoiding foul trouble and warding off fatigue, he can run it his way.
“Going back to 1995, that ’95 team, all of Tina (Charles’) teams, all of Maya (Moore’s) teams, all of Breanna Stewart’s teams, Dee (Taurasi) and Sue (Bird’s) teams, you couldn’t score on those guys. Fast forward to the last three or four years, you could get any shot you wanted against us. We didn’t have the ability to play at a level of intensity that we want to play, because we had to save everybody for 38, 39 minutes, and we didn’t have the number of people to keep running in there.
“So we’re able to go back to who we used to be, and we haven’t had a chance to be that since (Napheesa Collier, Katie Lou Samuelson, Kia Nurse, Stewie, Moriah Jefferson and Morgan Tuck) were on those teams. We had to play the hand that was dealt. This is the way I like to play.”
Right now, UConn is laying down a Royal Flush. Strong scored 21 points in the first half, finished with 23, to go with seven rebounds, six steals and four assists. Azzi Fudd scored 20 the second half, putting a fairly competitive game away.
“Our goal has been to have a defensive identity,” Fudd said, “to be in the passing lanes, make things hard for the other team, so I feel like every game we’re just trying to build on that, continue to take those chances, take those risks, get in the passing lanes and get our hands on as many balls as we can and trust each other, know that if KK (Arnold) was pressing full court and got beat, Sarah’s there to pick up and rotate. Having that sense of knowing where everyone is and help each other.”
Iowa (10-2), with a few players still around from its Final Four teams of 2022 and ’23, presented what may have been the toughest challenge the Huskies have left in the regular season. There is nothing to indicate anyone in the Big East has the wherewithal to take down UConn, and remaining nonconference opponents Tennessee, which lost to Louisville in the first game of the doubleheader in Brooklyn, and Notre Dame, will certainly be decided underdogs when they get in the Huskies’ way.
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Fudd and Quinonez each had four steals, six different players had at least one. Serah Williams had three of UConn’s five blocks. When she joined the program from Wisconsin, it gave the Huskies the rim protector to make it safer still to pressure the ball.
The Hawkeyes actually managed to shoot 52.2 percent in the game, and outrebound the Huskies, but due to all the steals, turnovers and blocks, UConn got off 18 more shots, making 11 more field goals. Aggressive defense, when it works like this, creates easy transition baskets, and the Huskies, who won the championship playing it safer last year, seem to be having more fun playing this way.
“It definitely does (play to my strengths),” Arnold said. “I feel like it gets me going, gets my team going, whether it’s diving for a loose ball, getting hyped up, that creates for my teammates getting out in transition, that’s one of the key things we want to do.”
UConn completed perfect seasons in 1995, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2014 and 2016. Less than a third of the way through, this group is beginning to check the boxes those teams did.
“All of those teams had really, really, really, really, really good players, and lots of them,” Auriemma said. “Otherwise, it would be hard to accomplish that. And I would say we had a lot of the right good players. Having good players is great, but if they’re the wrong ones and they can’t play together and they’re not committed to a certain thing, it doesn’t matter. So all of those teams, if I look back, every single one of them a team made up of incredibly competitive and bright players, and there was more than two or three.”
Can the 2025-26 Huskies join the roster of unbeatens, the elite-within-the-elite in Storrs? The evidence is piling up, but the architect will let others make the predictions.
“When you’re really, really good at something,” Auriemma said, “just shut up and let other people say it for you. … Other people say it best, and that’s the way it should be.”