Despite uneven performance, UConn taking the positives from win over Louisville

For the first 10 minutes of the season opener in the Armed Forces Classic at the Naval Academy, UConn women’s basketball looked the part as the defending national champions and preseason No. 1.

The Huskies jumped No. 20 Louisville in an opening quarter where seemingly everything went right. They started on an 8-0 run and held the Cardinals without a basket for the first 4:43. The offense flowed with little resistance while the defense allowed just three baskets on 18 attempts en route to a 25-9 lead.

The good times didn’t last, though. Over the final three quarters, UConn got out-scored 57-54 and saw a 28-point lead dwindle to as little as 10. The Huskies shot 4-26 from three and only attempted eight free throws.

All in all, it was a pretty standard season opener — some good, some bad with plenty to build off and improve upon. Most importantly, UConn still came out on top, 79-66.

“Everything's a learning experience,” Azzi Fudd said. “That was good practice, good little moments for us to work on and, again, keep building on.”

While Geno Auriemma acknowledged his team’s performance was far from perfect, he didn’t want to get bogged down in the negatives.

“I don't ever want to walk off court this year — because we're UConn and we're defending national champions and we're preseason number one — and make wins feel like losses because we didn't win by enough. We didn't win the right way. We had too many laws. We were too sloppy,” he explained. “Today, we were a typical basketball team — little bit better than typical. But generally speaking, that's what happens in basketball games: You have peaks and valleys. You play really well, you don't play well. You shoot good, you don't shoot good.

“So for the first game out, I thought it was a tremendous success.”

It helped that the good certainly outweighed the bad for the Huskies on Tuesday night. They had stretches of total dominance, pulling ahead by 16 in the first quarter and going up by nearly 30 at one point in the second half. That scoreline itself didn’t matter to the coach, though. Instead, what impressed him was that UConn did it while not firing on all cylinders.

“The way we got there was pretty cool, not making any threes and still getting up 28. You would say it's not an easy thing to do,” Auriemma said. “We didn't shoot free throws and we didn't make threes — and we're up 20. So that's pretty significant for our part.”

The Huskies had some real struggles — a sputtering offense in the second half, defensive lapses and a lack of free throw attempts, to name a few — but most of them would’ve been alleviated by a better shooting night.

After UConn put up 44 points in the first half, Louisville switched to a 2-3 zone and stayed in it because it proved effective. The Huskies made just a single 3-pointer after halftime.

“Zones are really good when you miss because then, if you're not careful, you keep missing and the zone stays a zone,” Auriemma said. “You make three or four out of 10, the zone goes back to man-to-man.”

UConn attacked the zone exactly how it wanted — get the ball into the middle of the court then find open shooters on the perimeter — it just didn’t make the shots. Auriemma can live with that.

“We'll take all those shots that we got any day of the week and feel good about it,” he said.

Once the offense stalled, the Huskies’ defense started to falter as well. Louisville increased its point total in every quarter, capped by a 26-point outburst in the fourth.

“They were pushing the ball on us and our defense got a little sloppy at the end — our communication containing the ball, our rotations on ball screens,” Fudd said. “I thought we let our fatigue get to us and our communication kind of slipped, so just little things that we need to continue. It was our first game but still not a habit we want to build.”

Ultimately, a wire-to-wire blowout wouldn’t have benefitted UConn at this point in the calendar. The Huskies already have two of those under their belt from the exhibitions with many more on tap in the Big East. They didn’t need another.

Instead, UConn got to see how it handled pressure in the season opener. When Louisville cut it to 10, Auriemma didn’t call a timeout to help his team regroup. The Huskies had to figure out how to remain composed and answer back on the fly.

They ended up leaning on their two superstars: Sarah Strong and Fudd.

After UConn got a much-needed defensive stop, it came up the floor and immediately got the ball to Strong down low. The sophomore scored despite a foul to end the run. On the next possession, the Huskies forced a turnover and found Strong in transition, who laid it in. Following that, Fudd knocked down a mid-range jumper that proved to be the dagger, extending the lead to 16 with 28 seconds left.

In UConn’s first must-have possessions of the season, Strong and Fudd scored three straight buckets to seal the victory. The Huskies were never in real danger of losing but those final two minutes put them through their first stress test as a team. That’ll be far more valuable in the long run than a 30+ point win.

If UConn wanted an easy win in the season opener, it could’ve scheduled a cupcake game like BU, Dayton or Northeastern, to use examples from the last few years. Instead, the Huskies notched a victory over the No. 20 team in the nation. Even if there were some shaky moments, nothing from Tuesday night should change the outlook for UConn going forward.

“This team's gonna be good,” Fudd declared.

Quiñonez sidelined

Blanca Quiñonez missed UConn’s season opener after suffering a left shoulder injury in practice over the weekend, the team announced before tip-off. She’s considered day-to-day and wasn’t seen wearing a sling.

Along with Quiñonez, Morgan Cheli (ankle) and Gandy Malou-Mamel (“got whacked by Serah Williams,” per Geno) also sat out the contest.

Stock up

Sarah Strong: After a slow start from the field (for her standards), Strong finished 9-17 en route to a team-high 21 points. She chipped in nine rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals, too.

Azzi Fudd: She continued to be aggressive with the ball in her hands and still put up 20 points despite a 2-8 day from three.

KK Arnold and Kayleigh Heckel: UConn’s point guards had a good day. Arnold starred with nine points in the first quarter en route to a final line of 13 points, seven rebounds, three steals and two assists. She also knocked down shots from the perimeter with ease — a good sign after shooting just 21.3 percent from three last season. As for Heckel, she put up 14 points, two assists, two rebounds and a steal in her UConn debut.

Stock down

Ashlynn Shade: The junior couldn’t get her shot to fall on Tuesday, going 1-7 from three and 2-10 overall. She still contributed with seven rebounds, though.

Serah Williams: While Williams scored UConn's first points of the season, she had an up-and-down day overall. She put way too much behind her first shot attempt and missed the rim entirely, which kicked off a 2-6 performance from the field. Williams added eight rebounds and four assists but the Huskies need more than four points from her going forward.

Allie Ziebell: After her breakout performance in the final exhibition, Ziebell only played six minutes — all of which came in the first half — and missed her lone shot attempt.