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UConn finally jelled to upset South Carolina and put women’s college basketball on alert

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Back in 2019, in Azzi Fudd’s living room in Virginia, Paige Bueckers took the floor with a captive audience. She had a pitch to make. On the Fudd family TV screen, she pulled up a PowerPoint complete with a video that Bueckers had created herself — high school highlights of Bueckers passing the ball seamlessly meshed into clips of Fudd knocking down shots for her high school team.

Bueckers, who had already committed to UConn, was putting the full-court recruiting press hard on her best friend, and her messaging wasn’t subtle: Come to Storrs, and this is what we can do, this is what we can be for the next few years.

That’s not how it has worked out.

Injuries, almost ironically suffered in a way that seemed to be the basketball gods keeping the two from playing together, meant that in three and a half years since Fudd arrived on campus before the 2021-22 season, the duo had played only 35 games together entering Sunday’s matchup at South Carolina.

In that time, with Bueckers and Fudd alternating their time on the floor with the Huskies, other behemoths have dominated the space, including South Carolina. That’s why Sunday’s game between No. 7 UConn and No. 4 South Carolina mattered even more. For Bueckers and Fudd, together at last, it was a chance — and maybe their last — to tilt the scales to UConn in a series that had become one-sided in their careers.

Even in UConn’s biggest games this season, Bueckers and Fudd have hardly been on the floor together. Fudd missed the Notre Dame game with a knee sprain and played eight minutes against USC (both losses). Against Tennessee, she was back but their combination wasn’t a winning one and UConn dropped that game too.

On paper and on film (unlike Bueckers’ recruiting pitch), there wasn’t much to go off to know what UConn could be when Bueckers and Fudd were finally back together.

Then came Sunday’s resounding 87-58 win over South Carolina. The Huskies’ first top-five road win since 2018. College GameDay in attendance. An ABC broadcast. The biggest stage with the brightest lights that this season’s team has seen yet.

Unlike the version of UConn we’ve seen this season — but much like the UConn mentality cultivated over decades — the Huskies showed up and didn’t shirk in a defining moment.

“We all knew that we were capable of this, but it does mean a lot,” Fudd said. “It definitely does boost our confidence, actually seeing ourselves do it. … Now that we’ve done it, we can’t get complacent. And this has to be our standard now. We can only get better from here. We can’t let this win be the best thing we do the rest of the season.”

A belief settled into UConn’s locker room before the game, Fudd said. The Huskies felt calm and ready. And from the jump, in front of 18,000 fans who had mostly come to watch reigning national champs South Carolina wallop an overmatched has-been, a vintage UConn emerged.

It was what we’ve all been waiting to see since Bueckers and Fudd teamed up in Storrs. On Sunday, this version of UConn — fast, connected, making plays and hitting shots — might have been overdue, but its arrival was better late than never. Better February, than not at all.

From the sideline, coach Geno Auriemma saw the Huskies play to win for 40 minutes for the first time this season. Players weren’t afraid to lose, attempting to avoid mistakes or dwelling on missed shots.

“That, more than anything else, was evident today,” Auriemma said. “That we played to win.”

Withthat mindset, UConn didn’t just win. It dominated. Six-foot-5 center Jana El-Alfy had yet to prove herself against any opponent this season, let alone a powerhouse like South Carolina’s interior rotation, but she helped the Huskies establish glass dominance early. A week after being outrebounded by Providence (ninth in the Big East standings), UConn outrebounded South Carolina by 19.

The offense flowed with precision and speed, a combo that hasn’t always been effective (in anything other than producing turnovers) for the Huskies. They finished with 22 assists on 31 field goals. Bueckers, whose own shot wasn’t falling, became a maestro of the offense, making everything happen for everyone else. She shot just 25 percent, but she may have been the most important cog in UConn’s wheel, finishing just three rebounds shy of a triple-double (12 points, 10 assists, seven rebounds).

“At times, kids think, if I shoot the ball well, I played great,” Auriemma said of Bueckers’ instrumental performance. “And that’s a perfect example of play(ing) great and not shoot(ing) the ball well.”

Then there was Bueckers’ counterpart in Fudd. Through the first half, she scored just five points and was shooting 20 percent. A perfectionist, Fudd could’ve probably diagramed each of her eight misses at halftime. When she came out to shoot at halftime, her shots — with no defender in sight — still weren’t falling.

A year ago, that could’ve gotten to Fudd. The misses could’ve been contagious. Fudd knows that cycle can be dangerous, and the slide can be steep. She has been there before. On Sunday, because she knows where she has been, she also knows how to avoid it. She rode the good vibes of her teammates and kept shooting, erasing her memory of the first half and halftime. Fudd exploded for 18 third-quarter points and finished with a game-high 28, hitting six 3-pointers, including five in the second half.

“She’s in a good frame of mind, more mature, and takes everything more in stride, instead of letting the past catch up to her,” Auriemma said. “This was a big moment for her. It really was. … She hasn’t played in a long time. Hasn’t been in this scenario in a long time, and for her to have the kind of game that she had, this is big.”

It was big for Fudd. Big for Bueckers. Big for UConn. Big for Auriemma.

For the first time this season, the Huskies looked like a team that could win it all. Sure, there were holes. No team is perfect, and frankly, Auriemma doesn’t want to think of it that way. But in his mind perfect basketball is more about all five players being on the same page for 40 minutes, playing to win through all four quarters.

By that standard, Sunday was pretty damn good.

Before the game, he had reinforced to his players that rebounding and transition defense — two areas where South Carolina usually smothers its opponents — would be be key. He stressed that against an opponent that has given up fewer than 60 points a game, while playing the toughest schedule in the country, UConn’s offense would need to win the game.

“I thought in those three things,” Auriemma said, “that’s about as close to perfect as we’ve been all year.”

But it was just 40 minutes. Bueckers, Fudd and Auriemma — who has managed their injuries and minutes the last few seasons — know as well as anyone how quickly the tides can change in women’s basketball. A day before the contest, the Huskies were about to be written off pending a South Carolina trouncing. Now, they could be voted as a top-four team in Monday’s AP poll.

Auriemma won’t discuss any of that in practice on Monday. UConn finally got its marquee win, finally got its two best players on the floor together in this environment, but now the hard part begins.

When the time comes for UConn to really show up in March, no one will care what the Huskies did in February. No one will crown them for what they put together on a rainy Sunday in Columbia.

But there’s an opportunity to bottle pieces of this performance, to take it forward every day and develop muscle memory of a performance built on playing to win. To “stack good days,” as Fudd said after her best performance of the year. Perhaps this exact performance, won’t be replicated in every game from now until March (“If we go down to Seton Hall Wednesday night and get outrebounded, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” Auriemma quipped), but if the Huskies can build off it, then they’ve got something to show for it. They showed on Sunday how dangerous they can be. They’ve finally put this version of themselves on the floor, and that means something.

To the AP voters and March Madness seed-makers, sure. But more importantly, to themselves. This was the version of UConn that Bueckers knew was possible all along — from that living room in Virginia to every arena in which she has played (or watched, in sweats, from the bench). Though the road has been winding, the Huskies just might be getting where she always knew they could.

“If we could just take a little bit of all this and take it with us,” Auriemma said. “I think we’re going to be a great NCAA Tournament team. Because this is in them, and it came out today. Can it come out every day? I don’t know. But we know it’s in them.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Connecticut Huskies, Women's College Basketball

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