Graduate guard Azzi Fudd had not played on the Entertainment and Sports Arena court since winning a state championship as a high school junior. In that game, a 10-point win for St. John’s College High School, Fudd led all players with 17 points and buried a halfcourt heave.
Back in Washington, D.C., Fudd turned into the No. 7 UConn women’s basketball team’s purest scoring threat for the second straight game. The Virginia native scored 21 points on 8-13 shooting as the Huskies pulled away from the Georgetown Hoyas 73-55.
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Fudd’s mother, Katie, almost always bought tickets whenever UConn visited Georgetown. She never got to see her daughter actually play, though, until Saturday afternoon. Head coach Geno Auriemma credits the support from the former No. 1 recruit’s family for how she started the game.
“I could tell early on she had a little bit of nervousness [to her]. Azzi is Azzi; she is fun to watch,” Auriemma commented postgame about Fudd. “Little by little, I think she is getting back to her old self.”
Despite the 2018 Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Player of the Year’s return home, the Hoyas gave the Huskies all they could handle for the first 2.5 quarters. Georgetown only shot 38.7% from the floor in the first half but buried seven triples for 21 of their 33 points.
Yet the Huskies, who had only nine players available with both Paige Bueckers and Ice Brady out, tightened up defensively. Connecticut’s defense held the Hoyas to only three three-pointers and no bench points while taking a +12 edge on the glass.
The 40th-year head coach has no explanation as to why the Huskies’ rebounding efforts vary from game to game. Even with the effort UConn had on the glass in the nation’s capital, there is still room to improve in that area.
“We need to rebound more as a team. We cannot expect one individual to get 15-20 every night,” Auriemma said postgame. “All of those things that we talked about, we finally played to in the second half.”
Fudd grabbed the spotlight in her unofficial homecoming game, but she received phenomenal support from Sarah Strong and Ashlynn Shade. Strong, the two-time Big East Player of the Week, nearly had a triple-double with 16 points, nine boards and six assists.
Shade, the reigning Big East Freshman of the Year, became a defensive menace in addition to picking up 12 points. The Indiana native swatted two shots, including one where she hustled back to deny Kelsey Ransom a breakaway bucket, and collected a steal.
Only redshirt freshman Jana El Alfy had more rejections with four in 18 minutes while grabbing six rebounds and scoring four points. Sophomore guard KK Arnold shined off the bench again with seven first-half points, five rebounds and four assists.
First-year student Khadee Hession had her breakout game in front of the sold-out crowd. Hession entered Saturday’s contest scoring no more than 13 points in a game; she had 14 in the first half. Behind a 6-8 mark from behind the arc, the Miami native spearheaded the Hoyas offense with 22 points.
Ransom, the Big East’s leading scorer, found multiple ways to get involved without crossing double figures. Ransom flirted with a double-double with nine points and eight rebounds while recording four assists and three steals.
Junior guard Victoria Rivera, who picked up 10 points, got Georgetown on the board with a jumper that answered Kaitlyn Chen’s fantastic under-the-basket floater. Rivera’s bucket was the only two-pointer the Hoyas made in the game’s first five minutes.
Georgetown instead relied on their three-point attack—they made four of their first six tries from downtown—to stun the Huskies early on. Half of those triples occurred during an 8-0 run from the Hoyas that saw them limit Connecticut’s shot selection for a 16-8 advantage.
But the Huskies, facing their largest deficit in Big East play at eight points, countered with a 7-0 run. Strong tossed a loose ball in the paint over to the wing after the Georgetown defense forced a fumble late in the period. Morgan Cheli immediately passed the rock to Arnold, who capped off the four-minute run with a wide-open three-pointer.
UConn, who trailed by one after the first quarter, took a 19-18 lead after the Princeton transfer landed a driving layup. Hession, who had five points in the game’s first 10 minutes, became even more unstoppable from the floor throughout the second period, though. The first-year student buried three go-ahead triples that kept the Hoyas in front until the final three minutes of the frame.
An 8-0 Huskies run, punctuated by Fudd’s three-pointer in front of two defenders, gave them their largest lead of the half at five points. Connecticut took that advantage into the locker room and needed just four minutes in the second half to stretch it to double digits.
But the Huskies only scored two points over the next 3.5 minutes after Georgetown called their first timeout. Despite their shooting woes, UConn prevented the Hoyas from closing the gap with their defense. The Huskies allowed just six points over the back half of the third quarter, and their offense created a more comfortable 14-point margin.
Connecticut led by that much when Georgetown head coach Darnell Haney called his second timeout of the game with 7:18 left in regulation. Two more triples, one from the Virginia native and one from Shade, resulted in the third Hoyas timeout with 5:21 remaining.
Fudd sank her fifth and final three-pointer of the night a minute later, helping her cross the 20-point mark for the second straight game. The 2019 Gatorade National Player of the Year received a rousing applause from the crowd when she checked out with 70 seconds left. Neither team scored in the final minute as the Huskies secured the season sweep over Georgetown.
Connecticut’s early-year road stretch concludes in Queens, New York, with a bout against the St. John’s Red Storm at Carnesecca Arena. Tip-off Wednesday night is at 7 p.m. on SNY.
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