STORRS, Conn. — Sitting in on UConn women’s basketball’s postgame press conference following an uninspiring win over Xavier to cap off the regular season, it would’ve been hard to tell that the Huskies had just won the Big East regular season championship.
Outside of a close loss to No. 1 South Carolina, the ninth-ranked Huskies mostly limped through the month of February. Head coach Geno Auriemma expressed his frustrations and concerns with where his team stands entering the postseason for nearly half an hour.
“The players ain’t what they used to be and the coaching ain’t what it used to be either,” Auriemma said. “I don’t think we coach these guys as well as we coached some of the other guys. And that’s evident when you watch us play on the floor, that we look like a poorly coached team.”
UConn (26-5, 18-2 Big East) let things get far too close against the worst team in the conference, which Auriemma said his players didn’t take seriously enough. The Musketeers were winless in Big East play (now 0-20) and had lost 18 straight games entering Monday night’s matchup. Yet the Huskies allowed them to go on a 11-0 run across the first and second quarters to take a 22-20 lead at one point.
The Huskies led by as many as 18 points in the second half, but never fully put the game away as one would expect. They won by a 60-51 margin, marking their 10th consecutive game decided by 10 or fewer points — something that simply doesn’t happen for a program of UConn’s caliber. At least, it hadn’t in the past.
“There’s a reason that we’ve been in those situations. There’s a reason why the last 10 games have been the way they’ve been,” Auriemma said. “It has nothing to do with fatigue. We used that long enough. That story has sailed. Now it’s just being held accountable for doing what you’re being coached to do, not what you feel like doing, not what feels right for you at the moment.
“I’m tired of the fatigue thing, I’m tired of we’re hurt, I’m tired of all that. It has nothing to do with it. All that would keep us from running up and down really well. We run up and down pretty good. We don’t think very well. We don’t speak on defense. We don’t communicate. That’s got nothing to do with tired or being injured. That has to do with a lot of selfishness. And a lot of you don’t want to change.”
Auriemma later clarified that by selfishness he isn’t referring to how the Huskies pass the ball or set screens on the court.
“Those are the end results, those are the byproducts of what happens when you listen and you pay attention and you focus in on what’s being said and what you’re being asked to do,” Auriemma said. “That’s been the biggest struggle. So when I say selfish … I’m talking about they pick and choose when they want to listen to how they’re being coached. And I define that as being selfish, that you only care about what you want to do and not what you’re expected to do.
“I could see it once, twice, three times. There’s players on our team that for five months have been watching film after games and have seen themselves in the same clips over and over and over and over and over and over again, and nothing changes. Like I said, the coaching ain’t what it used to be.”
Those repeated mistakes have been perhaps most evident in how UConn takes care of the ball. The Huskies have averaged 16.7 turnovers per game this season, including 17 on Monday night.
Auriemma also expressed with disappointment with his team’s inconsistency, in particular with individual player performances from game to game.
“I feel bad for them in some ways, like this much, because these are kids that I don’t think they were prepared to play this many minutes under this kind of pressure and have to perform every day,” Auriemma said. “So when they were coming off the bench or whatever their role was, they could afford to be good today and not so good Wednesday and be great Saturday and lousy next Tuesday, because we get them out and we get somebody else in there and everything will be good to go.
“But now you gotta do it every day, dude. They probably weren’t prepared for that. And at some point, it breaks. It’s easy when you have a Paige (Bueckers) out there who just puts it all together and fixes things. Or when you have an Azzi (Fudd) out there that just makes four straight threes and things get fixed.”
There hasn’t been any sort of timeline provided on when Fudd might return after missing the last 14 games, but she has participated in warmups over the last two games. Auriemma doesn’t expect the sophomore guard to come in and be an instant fix, though. After all, she has only played nine games this season and missed 22 of the last 24 with a right knee injury.
“I don’t think it’s realistic to think that somebody could miss that much basketball and come in and be the player that they were right off the bat,” Auriemma said. “Between physically being ready and between incorporating into the scheme of things on the team, it’s not going to be an easy transition, if it does happen at all. But at the same time, if it does happen, it’s better than if it doesn’t happen. Having Azzi available is way better than not having her available.”
With the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament set for Saturday, UConn will have four days between games for the first time since the start of January, when it had to postpone a matchup with DePaul due to a lack of available players. Auriemma believes that time will help, but he seemed to have a lot more concerns than optimism on Monday night.
“If we don’t get some things fixed,” Auriemma said, “I don’t think we’ll be playing three games (in the Big East tournament).”
In order to get those things fixed, Auriemma said his players need to collectively buy in to make a change. The best teams are player-led and he wants the Huskies to be able to coach each other through situations on the court.
“Somewhere along the line, maybe after the South Carolina game, we lost our way,” Auriemma said. " I thought early on we were getting a good blend, a good mix where we have four or five guys in double figures, everybody was touching the ball, we were moving, we were just flowing off each other. We were paying attention to each other, we were communicating, we were in sync. That takes a lot of work to stay like that … When you stop working at it to keep it, it’s gone. And now you got to work twice as hard to get it back.”
As the snowfall increased outside Gampel Pavilion and the presser winded down to a close, Auriemma was asked if he believes his team could have another successful postseason run that ends in a Final Four. The Huskies have made a record 14 in a row.
“The way we are right now, this team as it is right now? Don’t add anybody, who we are right now — that ain’t happening,” Auriemma said. “They could fool me, they’ve been fooling me all year.”
As he got up from his seat, Auriemma added in one last remark.
“I knew I should’ve gotten on that plane with Stewie in 2016,” Auriemma said with a laugh.
