SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — For most of the first quarter against Seton Hall on Saturday, the UConn women’s basketball team looked like it still thought the game was being played Sunday.
The Huskies had less than 48 hours of turnaround from their Thursday road trip to Georgetown after the incoming winter storm forced the Big East to move their matchup with the Pirates up 24 hours, and it showed in the team’s most sluggish start of the 2025-26 season. UConn faced its largest deficit to date after giving up a 6-0 run to start the game, and it was behind for more than four minutes after never trailing for longer than three in any previous matchup.
But once the team got back on track, it coasted to a 92-52 victory to improve to 21-0 and 11-0 in conference play.
The key to UConn’s recalibration was Blanca Quinonez, who checked in off the bench three and a half minutes into the opening quarter with the team trailing, 10-9. The freshman forward started a perfect 6-for-6 from the field and led the Huskies in points and rebounds at halftime. She went on the to finish with 16 points on 7-for-9 shooting plus five rebounds, four assists, three steals and a block in a season-high 28 minutes.
Huskies stars Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong also delivered when the team needed a boost. After averaging 21.7% from 3-point range over the previous three games, Fudd found her outside shot again and connected three times in the first quarter before she had her first miss four minutes into the second. The redshirt senior guard finished with 14 points shooting 5-for-8 plus three steals. Strong led the team with 17 points, six rebounds and five assists, also adding a trio of steals.
“That’s a huge thing for us: We need three high-level scorers,” coach Geno Auriemma said postgame. “If we’ve got Blanca playing like she played today, Sarah the way she normally plays and then throw Azzi in the mix, that gives us a chance to beat anybody in the country.”
Fudd drained a 3-pointer nearly two minutes into the opening quarter to give UConn its first points after the Seton Hall run, and she accounted for the Huskies’ first nine points of the game single-handedly. The team eventually got the offense flowing hitting 71% from the field and 57.1% from the perimeter in the quarter, though Fudd and Quinonez accounted for 18 of the team’s 25 points on 100% shooting.
But UConn’s defensive effort was uncharacteristically lethargic, particularly on the boards. They were outrebounded 5-1 on the offensive glass in the first quarter, and Seton Hall got 18 field-goal attempts to the Huskies’ 14.
“I thought Seton Hall came out really, really aggressively, and I think we go caught in a couple situations where, for the first time in maybe four or five games, our sequencing and our communication on the defensive end wasn’t 100%,” Auriemma said. “They took advantage of it each time we made a mistake in that first quarter. Then obviously after that, the next three quarters we kind of settled in and got the ship going in the right direction again.”
Strong began to take over in the second quarter, dropping 10 points to lead UConn to a 22-point lead at halftime, and she added another five points to open the third. Seton Hall stuck around early in the second half, outscoring the Huskies through the first three minutes, but UConn’s defense locked in to force nine turnovers in the third and hold the Pirates without a made field goal for more than six and a half minutes to enter the final quarter leading by 32.
Senior center Serah Williams exited the game seconds into the third quarter with an apparent injury to her right lower leg and did not return, finishing with a single rebound and no field goal attempts in eight minutes. She remained on the bench for the rest of the game with a wrap around her entire right shin and calf area. Auriemma said Williams “caught a knee to the calf,” and didn’t seem concerned that the injury would have any long-term impacts.
Seton Hall went another two minutes in the fourth without hitting a shot from the field, and UConn outscored the Pirates 19-11 in the final frame with Strong and Fudd on the bench. The Huskies got a more balanced effort in the second half with nine players scoring at least four points. Behind Quinonez, sophomore guard Allie Ziebell led the reserves with 11 points going 3-for-7 from the perimeter for her fourth double-digit performance of the season.
UConn shot 38% from 3-point range against the Pirates, ending a slump after back-to-back performances hitting below 30%. Junior guard Ashlynn Shade joined Ziebell and Fudd connecting three times from beyond the arc for the first time since Jan. 11, and five different players logged at least one 3-point make. The Huskies also put up 37 points off 27 turnovers against Seton Hall, matching the season-worst 27 they forced in their Jan. 3 win over the Pirates in Hartford.
“That’s a big part of what we’ve been able to do this year is put pressure on the other team, force them to play a little bit quicker than they want to play,” Auriemma said. “We were in this situation for a couple years because of our lack of depth an all the injuries we had: When you have to come up the floor and the defense is waiting for you every time, it’s hard to beat anybody … When you can get in those situations where they’re running back on defense and trying to figure out where’s everybody going, you need those buckets. To me, that’s the differentiator.”