UNCASVILLE — Creighton coach Jim Flannery wondered if he had inadvertantly stirred a hornet’s nest.
“I feel bad, I voted for KK Arnold for defensive player of the year instead of Sarah (Strong),” Flannery said. “And I think Sarah must’ve saw my vote, because she had four steals in the first five minutes. But to me they’re 1-A and 1-B defensively in the league.”
Of course, neither was aware of who voted for who on the Big East awards ballots, and you don’t have to get the Huskies angry for them to steal you blind and shut you down. UConn beat Creighton for the third time this season, 100-51 on Sunday in the conference tournament semifinals which so far have been even more one-sided than expected. Their annual coronation as Big East champs is expected Monday night.
In the recent discussion on whether this 2025-26 UConn team, 33-0 and ranked first in the country, is better than last year’s national champs, Geno Auriemma doesn’t believe a team could be better without Paige Bueckers, No.1 pick in the WNBA Draft. Flannery comes down on the side of the current team being better, because it’s deeper and more disruptive.
“I hate to disagree with Geno,” he said.
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Strong, who was the Big East Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, ended up with six of UConn’s 13 steals, three of the four blocks. The Huskies scored 57 points in the first half, prompted 19 turnovers, and this was basically coasting through the second half. In and of itself, this game tells us little about what is to come in March and April, it just tells us what the possibilities are.
“We have so much depth and healthy bodies this year, we can be aggressive and be smart as well,” said Arnold, who joined Strong on the league’s all-defensive team. “Just knowing that whoever comes in is picking up where we left off and is being aggressive, making sure we have the same amount of ball pressure and energy that we started off the game with.”
Defense wins national championships, you may have heard, and Auriemma’s teams have won 12 since 1995. You can’t rank those teams by personnel, or stats, but by how well they fit the style of basketball being played at the time. The coach warmed up to the subject.
“Times have changed significantly,” he said. “We’ve had some great defensive teams that had a lot of pieces to them. The game was played differently. Kara (Wolters), Rebecca (Lobo) and Jamelle (Elliott’s) championship team (1995), the game was played more inside the 3-point line, and we were so big and so dominant and so smart, it was hard to get quality shots against us.
“As the game started to change, how you played defense changed and you needed different kind of bodies. That Sue (Bird), Dee (Taurasi) and Swin (Cash) team (2002) had guards that could guard their centers, and our centers could guard their guards. But we didn’t have quite the depth. The team that had it all was probably the Stewie (Breanna Stewart), Stefanie Dolson, Kiah Stokes, when we ran that team out it was hard for anybody to see the basket, let alone get a basket. That team, with Bria Hartley, Kelly Faris, might’ve been the hardest team to score on that I have coached.
“But then if Renee (Montgomery) and Tina (Charles) were here, Maya, Kalana Greene, Tiffany Hayes, that group, so we’ve been lucky we have been able to put defensive teams out there that are what the time called for. That Rebecca team in some ways would be too slow to play at this level of basketball we have right now. And this team right now, because we’re so versatile, this team creates a lot of turnovers.”
UConn’s opponents have turned it over 813 times, or 24.6 per game. That’s tops in the country, as is the Huskies’ assists-to-turnover ratio of 1.85. Creighton shot 33 percent Sunday, which is right on the Huskies’ nation’s-best average.
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“What they can do defensively,” Flannery said. “Talking to Geno before the game, I said, ‘You guys are so deep and so disruptive. Yeah, we were never in the game.”
During recent years UConn teams have been so beset with injuries, they have not been able to pressure the ball as relentlessly as this team can. No fear of foul trouble, no lack of confidence in the bench, UConn can hound a team at the 3-point line, protect the rim, guard kind of challenge this 2025-26 season has presented … so far.
“Defensively, we’re been able to be more disruptive than we have been in maybe the last 10 years, given what we’ve been through,” Auriemma said. “So it’s a much different team than it was last year. I’m not of the opinion that we’re better. We’re different. We play a little different style than we did last year. When we’re on our game, we’re as effective as we were last year at this time.
“The trick is going to be, once we get into the tournament, is what happens if we aren’t going to be able to create a lot of those turnovers, and that’s why we spend so much timing working on our half-court offense. Because when the NCAA Tournament comes around, all those teams that you just steal it from, and run in there and get layups, they’re watching on TV, they’re not playing against you.”