LOS ANGELES — When Geno Auriemma watches Blanca Quinonez on the court, the UConn women’s basketball coach is actively searching for opportunities to pick apart the freshman’s game.
Quinonez was overwhelmingly impressive in the No. 1 Huskies’ 79-51 rout of No. 16 USC on Saturday, finishing with 12 points, a team-high four steals, four rebounds and a single turnover. But Auriemma pinpointed her lowlight just before halftime, when she failed to contest a transition layup by Trojans guard Londynn Jones — one of just four field goals the Huskies allowed in the entire quarter.
Advertisement
“Did you see the one play? It was amazing,” Auriemma joked postgame, providing a visual demonstration with his index fingers. “She’s running down the court, and this is the guy on their team with the ball going down the middle of the court towards the basket. She just escorted her all the way to the basket … Blanca can’t go a whole game without doing something I can show in film that we can remind her and remind myself she’s 18 years old and she’s got a long way to go.”
The quip was as much a mind game as it was an earnest critique. Auriemma admitted that he fixates on Quinonez’s mistakes to moderate his own expectations, because her highlight reel makes him forget that the freshman is just eight games into her college career.
“I look for those moments, because if I don’t, all the other moments are amazing,” Auriemma said. “She’s on the ball, she’s off the ball, she’s getting buckets, she’s rebounding. She just plays like somebody who’s played a lot of basketball at a higher level.”
Ten games into the season, the sentiment rings true not just for Quinonez but for the entire UConn team amid their first 10-0 start since 2020-21. Auriemma has to emphasize every minor slip-up, because the Huskies aren’t giving him much else to complain about.
Advertisement
“We have the best coaches in the country, and they expect a certain standard of play,” star guard Azzi Fudd said after leading the Huskies with 17 points against USC. “He expects us to play the same way with the same intensity every day … It doesn’t matter if we’re up, if we’re down, who we’re playing. We’re trying to play UConn basketball and we’re trying to get better, trying to learn, trying to just play together.”
UConn isn’t just winning this season; it’s demoralizing almost every team in its path the way it used to during the height of its dynasty more than a decade ago. The Huskies have trailed for a total of seven minutes and 21 seconds across their 10 games so far, and their two minutes and 53 seconds behind USC marked the most time they’ve spent trailing all year. They rank fifth in the country in scoring margin with four ranked wins, beating opponents by an average of 38 points.
“The No. 1 team in the country came in here today, and they’re really good,” Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “You play a team like this because you know that if you don’t play hard and get it right, it’s not going to be good enough … It doesn’t feel good. It’s embarrassing to get beat on your home court.”
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Huskies’ dismantling of USC was that it happened during an off game for superstar Sarah Strong. Auriemma said the sophomore is dealing with a stomach bug and “wasn’t herself” at shootaround, but UConn didn’t need to rely on her the way it has in its other ranked matchups. Though Strong still finished with an impressive stat line —14 points, seven boards, three assists, three blocks, three steals — Saturday was the first top 25 game where she didn’t lead the team in either scoring or rebounds.
Advertisement
Even with their best forward under the weather, the Huskies controlled the paint outscoring USC 44-22, and they also dominated on the boards 41-33. On top of Quinonez’s production, Wisconsin transfer Serah Williams had one of her best performances in a UConn uniform with a season-high nine rebounds. The senior center came into the game with a level of intensity that Auriemma has been waiting to see from her, scoring all six of her points in the first five minutes of the opening quarter. She added two blocks and a steal on the defensive end, highlighted by an emphatic denial on USC star Jazzy Davidson in the final seconds of the first half.
No. 1 UConn women’s basketball routs No. 16 USC 79-51 for statement victory on the road
“There’s a difference in your team when you can get really good, solid play from your post players,” Auriemma said. “The way Serah got off to the start that she did, it helped on both ends. It helped us offensively to establish that, and it helped us defensively because she rebounded better than she has through the first (nine) games. Especially on a day where Sarah Strong didn’t have her best stuff, it’s important.”
UConn has just three ranked games left on its 2025-26 schedule, and only one — next Saturday’s meeting with No. 11 Iowa at Barclays Center — is slated to be a top-15 matchup. With their only true road test behind them and no apparent challenger in the Big East, an undefeated regular season is beginning to feel inevitable for the Huskies.
Advertisement
There have been just 10 undefeated national champions in the history of women’s basketball, six of which belong to UConn. The Huskies haven’t entered the NCAA Tournament without a loss since 2017-18, and the team ended a record 111-game winning streak when it fell to Notre Dame in the Final Four.
Auriemma has gotten used to ups and downs throughout the season during the intervening years as the Huskies struggled with injuries and elite talent became more evenly dispersed among the top programs with the inception of NIL and the transfer portal. But he speaks about this year’s team like he sees something vintage in them, a dominance reminiscent of the old days.
“You want to win every game you play obviously, but you want to get better each game that you play,” Auriemma said. “We’re starting to get a little bit of identity, a sense of who we are and what our games look like. There haven’t been a lot of highs and lows. We’ve been pretty consistent … so I think up to this point, I feel pretty good about what we’ve accomplished and where we are.”
