For the eighth straight game, the No. 5 UConn women’s basketball team forced their opposition into committing 15 turnovers. Against the Providence Friars on Sunday afternoon, however, UConn took and capitalized on a half-off sale.
The Huskies’ defense, three days removed from allowing 80 points, doubled their pressure at Amica Mutual Pavilion. Connecticut held Providence to a 26.5% clip from the floor and just six assists while forcing 25 giveaways. A lockdown defense, combined with some stellar offensive performances, secured the Huskies’ 77-40 win over the Friars in downtown Providence.
“We want to make the game fast, put a lot of pressure on their ball handlers,” head coach Geno Auriemma told CBSSN postgame. “Our transition is probably one of the best parts of the game. The more we can get [our opponent] to play fast and turn the ball over, that plays the way we want to play.”
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As UConn’s vexing defense exhausted Providence, their offense capitalized when they could on blown coverage. The Huskies shot 42.2% from the floor, but they were 11-24 from downtown and had four players with at least four field goals. Three of them crossed double figures, but no individual dominated one stretch as much as Azzi Fudd did.
For 20 minutes, Fudd’s offensive struggles carried over from Thursday in Knoxville, Tennessee—she shot 0-4 across the first two periods. Once she buried her first triple 39 seconds into the second half, however, the 5-foot-11 guard could not stop. Fudd shot an insane 5-5 from downtown and 6-7 from the floor for all 17 of her points in the third quarter alone.
Redshirt senior Paige Bueckers was just as aggressive with 20 points on 6-12 shooting with five assists and four steals. Yet Bueckers’ approach involved spreading out her attack across three separate quarters. The two-time Big East Player of the Year first focused on drawing fouls. Once her shots started falling, however, Bueckers complemented it with more defense.
Sophomore guard Ashlynn Shade rounded out the double-digit scoring trio, with most of her offense coming when she first entered the game. Shade scored the last eight points of the opening period across a 64-second window. When her offense cooled off, the reigning Big East Freshman of the Year resorted to contributing elsewhere. Shade finished with 12 points, three rebounds, two assists and a steal.
“When we are playing at a certain pace and we spread the floor a little bit, we have kids that can shoot,” Auriemma said about those three individuals on CBSSN.
Graduate student Kaitlyn Chen contributed in that first quarter as well, with seven of her nine points opening the game for Connecticut. Chen additionally recorded three steals, the same number that Sarah Strong and Jana El Alfy had. Despite shooting a combined 5-16 from the floor and scoring 13 points, the Huskies’ two starting forwards snagged 13 total rebounds. Sophomore KK Arnold, meanwhile, had four points and seven assists.
Each Big East charter member rejected three shots, but the Huskies’ consistent aggression prevented Providence from mustering many runs. Connecticut specifically shut down Grace Efosa, who finished with seven points on 2-14 shooting, for most of the afternoon. Until the final four minutes, Efosa had just two points at a 1-10 clip.
Senior guard Marta Morales Romero, who entered the day averaging 6.7 points a game, stepped up on offense. Morales Romero scored the Friars’ first five points and added 10 more in the second for a team-high 15. Graduate guard Brynn Farrell provided secondary support for Providence with eight points, six of which came on free throws.
Chen nearly had that many points (she had seven) in the opening four minutes for the Huskies. The former Princeton Tiger started 3-3 from the floor; every other UConn player shot a combined 0-6. Morales Romero became the Friars’ answer to Chen in that same span. The senior Spanish native scored all five of Providence’s points before the first media timeout.
It was not until Efosa landed a layup, her only points until the final frame, that someone other than Chen and Morales Romero scored. Shade was not the second Husky to score for the team, but she quickly became their next catalyst once she checked in. The Indiana native accounted for the first quarter’s last eight points in 64 seconds and put Connecticut up 23-9.
Bueckers struck next on offense when she scored six straight points in almost 90 seconds in the ensuing frame. Strong’s wide-open three-pointer 25 seconds later forced a timeout from Friars head coach Erin Batth. That stoppage slowed the Huskies’ offense, but not their defense.
UConn only scored two points—both coming on a Shade layup with no one defending her under the basket—over a five-minute window. In that same span, the Huskies allowed just five points on 2-8 shooting and forced four Providence giveaways. The Friars committed another four turnovers after the California native’s layup as Connecticut took a 40-16 halftime lead.
The 23-year-old Minnesota native and Fudd each had five points to force a second Providence timeout three minutes into the third quarter. Farrell ended the Friars’ scoring drought at the charity stripe, but it took another two minutes for them to make a field goal.
Providence went on to shoot 4-7 over the rest of the period following the senior wing player’s scoop-and-score. But the Virginia native commanded that entire frame. Fudd, who looked more aggressive than she did three days ago, buried five three-pointers over 10 minutes. The last of her triples helped her outscore the Friars by herself.
Neither team scored half as many points in the final frame as the 2022 Big East All-Freshman Team selection did in that third quarter. No player made multiple buckets as the first women’s basketball game at the AMP in 15 years ended with a 37-point Huskies win.
UConn heads home for just one game as they welcome the St. John’s Red Storm to Gampel Pavilion on Wednesday night. Tip-off is at 7:30 p.m. on SNY.
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