Since the first week of the 2025-26 season, the UConn women’s basketball team has been building a case as the best defensive unit in the country.
The Huskies rank in the upper echelon in nearly every statistical category on defense, both as a team and on an individual level. The squad boasts the No. 5 scoring defense in the country, and they are currently third in turnover margin, sixth in steals per game, and 13th in opponent field goal percentage. Star forward Sarah Strong leads the nation in defensive rating and junior guard KK Arnold is in the top five of defensive box plus/minus.
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Geno Auriemma believes this squad has the potential to be one of the strongest defensive teams he’s ever had in 41 seasons at UConn, but the Huskies coach knows the key is to avoid complacency as the team gets into the grind of Big East play.
“There are glimpses that we can be everything we need to be to have the kind of success we want to have this season,” Auriemma said following an 84-48 rout of Seton Hall on Saturday. “We’re getting a little bit better at those things, at reading each other, making the right rotations, doing a pretty good job of keeping people off the free throw line. Little by little, I think we’re improving. We just talked about it in the locker room, that to me it’s the one thing that you have to work on every single day in practice the entire year.”
UConn’s defense has been the engine behind its complete dominance through the start of its conference slate. The Huskies are averaging nearly 25 forced turnovers per game on the season, and that figure has increased to almost 30 against Big East competition. The team has yet to allow more than 53 points in a conference game, outscoring opponents by an average of 48 with more than 42% of their scoring coming off of defensive takeaways.
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But even with its massive margins of victory, UConn’s offense has grappled with some inconsistency in recent weeks. The Huskies had their two worst turnover performances of the season in the last two games, giving up 21 at Providence and 17 against Seton Hall. Ball movement is essential to the Huskies system, and they currently lead the country averaging 24.3 assists per game, but Auriemma wants to see them find more balance between a pass-first mindset and aggressive scoring — especially from a player like Strong who has the ability to dominate on the offensive end.
“One of the not so perky perks of coaching women’s basketball at UConn is you get a lot of unselfish players,” Auriemma said after the Seton Hall game. “(Sarah) spent 15 minutes yesterday (in practice) just getting the ball up at the rim. Now she’s got it, and she decides that she wants to throw it out there and it gets turned over. KK has got a layup, and I’m thinking you get to the free throw line at worst. ‘No, I want to stop and throw it to Sarah who’s running 100 miles an hour in front of three people.’ (We’re) trying to do things that are a little bit more difficult than they need to be. It’s a good problem to have, I think, that they want to be very unselfish. But there’s a fine line there.”
The Huskies could get a test on Wednesday night when they continue Big East play against St. John’s at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, even though the Red Storm don’t match up up especially well with UConn. They don’t take a high volume of 3-point shots, which is where the Huskies are weakest defensively, and they are currently last in the conference in forced turnovers averaging just 14 per game, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Huskies break open a substantial lead in the first half like it has in most of its Big East games thus far.
But the Red Storm have already proven they can challenge higher-level competition, holding wins over then-No. 18 Oklahoma State and a Georgia Tech squad that upset Notre Dame last week. Though St. John’s isn’t the most disruptive on the defensive end, the team holds opponents to less than 60 points per game and ranks in the top 5 in the Big East in both opponent field goal and 3-point percentage. It’s the kind of matchup where UConn can’t afford to get lazy if it gets ahead early, because St. John’s is capable of fighting back into the game.
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“Everything that you do and every game that you play you’re trying to create some kind of habit, like this is what I do in these situations,” Auriemma said last week after beating Providence. “There’s a bunch of plays where we made the right pass, we got a bunch of layups, we got a bunch of wide-open threes, and it was great … Then you get mentally just, I don’t know, you just play bad basketball for a while … If we had 21 turnovers against one of the top teams in the country, then we’re in trouble.”
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How to watch UConn women’s basketball vs. St. John’s
Site: PeoplesBank Arena, Hartford
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Time/date: 7:30 p.m., Wednesday
Team records: UConn 15-0 (6-0), St. John’s 13-3 (3-2)
Series record: UConn leads 52-18
Last meeting: 71-40 UConn, March 8, 2025 in Queens, New York
TV: truTV
Streaming: HBO Max
Radio: UConn Sports Network on FOX Sports 97.9
