For a stretch on Sunday, Tennessee looked like it had UConn on its heels. But the thing about a team as talented and well-balanced as UConn is that even on its heels, it can find momentum. Heck, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong could probably find momentum in quicksand.
The two combined for 53 points in No. 1 UConn’s 96-66 win over No. 15 Tennessee (14-5, 6-1 in SEC). The pair’s ability to score from anywhere on the floor makes UConn (23-0, 12-0 in Big East) not just a defensive mismatch, but also an unsolvable problem — at least to this point in the season. After all, having either Strong or Fudd could make almost any team a title contender. To have both? Well, that’s UConn for you.
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But for UConn to be as dominant as it is — the Huskies just reeled off their 18th-consecutive 25-plus point victory — Fudd and Strong need to be excellent.
“When we go into these kinds of games, we pretty much know that if those two don’t have big games, it’s going to be really hard for us to win,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “Not that we can’t, but it would be really hard for us to win.”
Though Fudd scored the first seven points of the game to indicate a forthcoming rout, the Huskies still managed to hit some quicksand. UConn coughed up a 15-point first-quarter lead and let the Lady Vols tie it up by halftime, and the Huskies turned over the ball nearly as much in the first half as they have in full games this year. Yet with Strong and Fudd, a creeping sense of an inevitable Huskies victory never goes away — the eventual 30-point margin was the largest in the series’ history and was Tennessee’s second-worst loss in program history.
Fudd and Strong combine for 36.5 points per game this season, seamlessly filling the scoring gap left by Paige Bueckers, who was a focal point of last season’s offense. Against their top competition this season — five games against teams that currently rank among the top 15 — the duo averaged 47.8 points a game. Their production against Tennessee marks the second time this season they’ve combined for at least 50 points; their 50 points against Iowa were responsible for another signature victory.
The cast around Fudd and Strong has its moments, too. The energy and defensive prowess of KK Arnold (six steals), the all-around contributions of Ashlynn Shade, transfers Serah Williams and Kayleigh Heckel’s continued growth in UConn’s system and sharpshooter Allie Ziebell — who hit a program-record 10 3-pointers in the Huskies’ previous game and requires constant monitoring on the perimeter — all support the duo. Tennessee looked outmatched for most of the game, and that was even as Blanca Quiñonez, one of the nation’s top freshmen, sat on UConn’s bench with a day-to-day shoulder injury.
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For years, the women’s hoops calendar revolved around the UConn-Tennessee matchup. The rivalry helped build and sustain the sport over decades. Today, Fudd said, “it’s not the same as it was back then” when it comes to the circus of the game. But inside those lines, this game still did everything for UConn that games of the past did: It put a mirror up to a UConn team that has national title aspirations.
Auriemma won’t have issues finding faults in that reflection. After Fudd finished three rebounds and three assists short of a triple-double (with four steals and a block), he pointed out that she also had two turnovers. But the uncharacteristic mistakes UConn made in the second quarter when it allowed Tennessee’s defensive speed and pressure to impact its play will resonate more loudly at the Huskies’ practices in Storrs this week than the margin of victory.
“You play these games to be really tested, to find out a little bit of what your team is made of,” Auriemma said. “It’s good that you have to regroup and find yourself.”
UConn found itself on Sunday. It played unselfish basketball in an exclamation point victory. The Huskies have been perfect so far this year, having rough quarters only here and there, and never at a point when or for long enough to hurt them beyond learning a lesson. (UConn’s four-point third quarter in a win against ranked Michigan comes to mind.)
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No doubt, when any team in March sees UConn in its path, it will examine these occasional rough patches UConn has experienced. Can Tennessee or Michigan provide a roadmap for future UConn opponents? Can anything be done to slow the Huskies from regrouping and finding their stride?
It’ll be on Auriemma and his staff to plan the reverse. It’ll be on his players to learn from these stretches to find the new version of themselves faster the next time around. To work backward to figure out how to stop issues at the first warning sign. To understand how the yarn started unraveling in the first place. In the rankings, this is another “W,” putting the Huskies one step closer to another undefeated season. But to UConn, it will be a warning sign along the way (and to Auriemma, a close call).
The perennial knock against UConn is that because it plays in the Big East, it doesn’t come up against the night-in, night-out challenges like teams in the SEC or Big Ten. And yet, every SEC and Big Ten opponent on the Huskies’ schedule this year has met the same fate. Even in those games with cold stretches or tough moments, UConn’s UConn-ness was inevitable. The Huskies are appearing to pull away from the field as they go for the first back-to-back women’s basketball national championships since the program’s 2015 and 2016 titles.
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For now, UConn remains perfect. It’s a sentence that has been typed a thousand times over the last few decades in women’s hoops. The Huskies’ last loss came 39 games ago in Knoxville last season. Since then, the only thing they’ve lost is the No. 1 WNBA Draft pick. Somehow, with Fudd and Strong leading the charge, this season’s Huskies team might be even more dominant.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Connecticut Huskies, Women’s College Basketball
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