HARTFORD — There were times in the second quarter when Geno Auriemma looked like he’d just seen a train careen off the rails — arms spread, eyes wide, mouth open in utter disbelief. And it wasn’t an official he was looking at.
Tennessee oustcored the UConn women by 20 points over a 12-minute stretch, blowing past out-of-position defenders, attacking the basket, cashing in on the Huskies’ mistakes. The Vols were doing what they did to UConn last February in Knoxville, and what the Huskies have been doing to every opponent since.
After taking a 21-5 lead, the Huskies had to scramble to get the game tied at 42 at the break, and one could only imagine the ground-shaking, paint-peeling tirade they would be getting from their coach at halftime.
Imagine again.
“I’ve noticed then when things are starting to go sideways like that, I can make it worse if I pour it on,” Auriemma said. “They’re already frustrated with how it’s going, and if I pour it on, it makes it worse, so I’ve got to take a completely different tact.”
Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: New UConn punter kicking by different ‘rules’; On Belichick snub and more
With 12 women’s basketball championships and close to 1,300 wins behind him, and 41 years experience, Auriemma, 71, knows how to read a room. It wasn’t the time or place for the Tennessee Holler, so Grampa Geno showed up to re-assure them.
“It was like, we know what we’re doing wrong, we need to get together and lock in,” Azzi Fudd said.
“It was about slowing it down, don’t let them speed us up,” Sarah Strong said. “Just play at our pace and not to let them make us play faster.”
Fudd and Caroline Ducharme echoed the coaches’ messaging and that was about it.
Setting an everything’s-going-to-be-all-right tone, Auriemma laid out a few defensive adjustments, a few reminders. The turnovers stopped, the offense clicked into gear and the Huskies outscored Tennessee 29-11 in the third quarter, and went on to win 96-66 for the sellout PeoplesBank Arena crowd. UConn is still No.1, still undefeated, and not likely to be challenged like this again until they are on the brink of banner No. 13.
“I’m like the front-end loader of pouring it on my entire career,” Auriemma said. “If we go in the locker room and it’s going bad and everything is on fire, I’m bringing out the gasoline hose and I’m adding to it. With some teams in past years, it really got them to a place where I needed them to be. But I’ve noticed, lately, it doesn’t work any more. It works sometimes, you can do it sometimes, but you have to really be paying attention now more than ever to when those times are.”
Think it through, and it’s easy to understand why this team just doesn’t need to be read The Riot Act. These are experienced college players, some have played elsewhere, some have made it through and made it back from devastating injuries to triumph for UConn last April. Playing in the Big East, it would be easy to fall into bad habits while still winning by 40, 50, 60 points game after game. This team generally does not, and continues to hit the floor for loose balls and make the extra passes no matter the score, which is the way Auriemma primes them for the time when every possession will matter.
This nonconference game, against the traditional SEC power and an historic rival, dating back 30 years to when the UConn program was on the rise, was dropped into the schedule on Feb. 1 for a purpose, and for the Huskies that purpose was served. The Vols provided the wake-up call, the necessary reminder that for all that has been accomplished, this can all come to an abrupt, empty end in March if things get just a little slopped for too long a period. They outscored the Huskies 35-15 through that stretch. “For about 15 minutes, we looked as good as we’ve looked all year,” Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell said.
But, she also noted, it’s a 40-minute game and UConn has still Strong, Fudd, and a strong supporting cast that on Sunday called on Kayleigh Heckel to perform a bigger role. Why rant and rave?
“I wouldn’t say it shocked us,” Fudd said. “It was more of a wake-up, get ourselves back together, lock back in. Everything they were doing, it was lapses on our part, so it was obviously and intense, like, ‘let’s go,’ but still calm. It wasn’t frantic, I don’t think at any point we were really worried or freaking out at any point.”
Azzi Fudd, Sarah Strong dominate to lead UConn women’s basketball in rivalry rout of Tennessee
Fudd scored 27, with seven rebounds, seven assists and four steals in 33 minutes, Strong scored 26, with nine rebounds and four assists. At the end of the third quarter, Heckel twice fainted kick-outs and drive unimpeded to the basket for easy scores, then Fudd kicked on out to Allie Ziebell, who buried a three and, with it, buried Tennessee to make it 39 in a row.
“This group, they do respond when you’re pushing them,” Auriemma said. “You just have to reward them when things are going well and it’s almost got to be, not even pushing them, but pulling them out of their funk instead of standing behind them and whipping them out of their funk. … Whenever you start playing out of your comfort zone, that means mentally, you’re gone. There’s something going on mentally and we lost it, we lost our composure, we lost our identity offensively, we lost our defensive integrity, so that means mentally there were some issues they were dealing with, individually and as a team. We made so many mistakes that first half, offensively and defensively, so the more I pour it on, their mind gets even more cluttered now with negative stuff and they can’t see their way out of it. Today, I think we just needed some reassurance.”