STORRS — Maybe there is still a ton of snow piled up out there, but the days are getting longer and, mercifully, the UConn women’s basketball conference season is getting shorter.
Just a handful of games are left in what long ago became the most protracted preseason, or exhibition schedule in major college or pro sports. The Huskies went into their game against Creighton on Thursday night with a 60-game winning streak in Big East play; no one has challenged them yet, and there has yet to appear a sign anyone will, this month or in the conference tournament at Mohegan Sun in early March.
UConn has lost three conference games since 2013, making the Januarys and Februarys one long tune-up for March Madness, and the challenges awaiting the unbeaten and top-ranked defending champions is appearing on the horizon and coming into focus.
“If you look at what everybody is saying, the same four teams are the same four teams they’re picking this year to be in the Final Four,” Geno Auriemma said. “In that respect, it’s probably same as it’s always been. But there are games that are being played that, outcomes are different than they normally would be. The same teams aren’t winning beyond the four teams they’re talking about.”
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In last season’s Final Four, UConn defeated UCLA and South Carolina, decisively, in fact, to win its 12th national championship. South Carolina beat Texas in the other semifinal. Those teams are currently the top four teams in the AP Poll.
The Huskies are ranked No.1 in that poll and also hold the No.1 spot in the NCAA’s NET Ranking, a key metric in tournament seeding, for a reason. They play a national schedule, and they have beaten several teams that are in the Top 25, or have been at one time or another, including Michigan, Louisville, Iowa, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Southern Cal. Despite the lack of competitiveness from Big East opponents, the Huskies’ resume is packed with quality wins and with impressive victories over Notre Dame and Tennessee in the middle of the conference season, they have so far shown they are not getting soft.
But they have not faced South Carolina, UCLA, Texas, No. 5 Vanderbilt or No. 6 LSU, and their tightest win, 72-69, came against Michigan, ranked seventh. UConn will probably have to beat one or two from that group sooner or later to get championship No. 13.
“We’ve learned how we need to respond to aggression,” point guard KK Arnold said. “It’s going to be an aggressive game, how we respond, whether it’s on the rebounding end, or how we need to control the paint to start off the game, what we need to do to start off a game, that’s been a big point of emphasis when we play teams like those. Make sure we come out and throw the first punch.”
Since UConn has missed the Final Four only once since 2008, making 16 of the last 17 played, let’s assume for the sake of discussion that they will make their way through the Regional as a No.1 seed and get to Phoenix. Should they find UCLA, Texas or South Carolina, they will likely face a center who is 6 feet 6 or taller and scoring in double digits, UCLA’s Lauren Betts, South Carolina’s Madina Okot and Texas’ Kyla Oldacre, all potentially tough matchups. In the semifinals last season, Auriemma went to a smaller lineup to neutralize UCLA’s and South Carolina’s size advantage. A “postion-less” approach featuring Sarah Strong and Blanca Quinonez could certainly be effective.
This year, he brought in an experienced post player of his own in Serah Williams from Wisconsin, to go with Jana El Alfy, and after recent games he has been calling them out to adopt a “dominant mindset” If one or both rises to the challenge, it could be a game-changer for the Huskies going forward.
“It’s a double-edged sword in some ways,” Auriemma said. “There are times when we play, we sacrifice giving up some size defensively for what we gain offensively, where their big guys can’t guard us on the perimeter, so it’s always a chess match of, of we can’t go big and match your big, then we go small and that’s a different problem for the other team. Against UCLA last year, our big guys set the tone early in the game, but what ultimately won it for us was our ability to spread the floor, make it difficult for people’s big guys to come out. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to match some teams’ bigs. You worry about that stuff come March, but, yeah, there are a lot of things we could do if we get more consistent play from our big guys, both defensively and offensively, there are more things we could do.”
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LSU, coached by old UConn nemesis and four-time national champ Kim Mulkey, doesn’t have the size, but offers strong guard play. Dawn Staley’s South Carolina, which has joined UConn has the dominant team the last decade or so, beat Tennessee by 40 last weekend and appears to be getting players healthy at the right time, a young team that is maturing. Vanderbilt, coached by longtime Husky Shea Ralph, has been in the Top 10 all year despite its SEC schedule. At Texas, coach Vic Schaefer has the elite point guard, Rori Harmon, to go with its size, and plays a rugged brand of defense.
Of course, these things are relative. No, UConn has not played these teams without Paige Bueckers and Kaitlyn Chen, key figures a year ago, but no team anywhere is looking forward to a matchup with its current high-end talent and depth, including Azzi Fudd, Strong, Arnold, Quinonez, Ashlynn Shade, Kayleigh Heckel and, with her recent emergence, Allie Ziebell, especially as Auriemma gets them some strategic rest and rehab. As long as the Huskies remain unbeaten they will have that team-to-beat target on their backs, and there are teams capable of taking them down on a given night.
“There is more unpredictability, it seems,” Auriemma said. “You get a team that goes from 15th to fifth, then the next week they’re 17th. Or you get a team, like Duke, that drops out completely, then all of a sudden they’re 11th. So there has been a lot of unpredictability this year, which is probably bodes well for the NCAA Tournament, where there are more unpredictable outcomes for the Tournament. I haven’t seen every team play, but from afar, that’s what it seems like.”