HARTFORD, Conn. — If you told someone a few months ago that Inês Bettencourt would be the starting point guard for UConn women’s basketball in a top-25 matchup on the road, they probably wouldn’t have believed you.
A few months before that, they probably wouldn’t have even heard of the freshman from São Miguel, Azores, an autonomous island region of Portugal. She was a late addition to the 2022 class after Paige Bueckers suffered a season-ending ACL tear in early August.
Yet, last Thursday, Bettencourt stepped to the free-throw line to seal the Huskies’ 69-64 win over Princeton after Nika Mühl went down with a head injury. Then on Sunday, with Mühl in concussion protocol and Azzi Fudd out with a knee injury, Bettencourt got her first career start in a 85-78 loss at then-No. 20 Maryland (now No. 15).
“I felt for her,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “My heart went out to her because she’s being put in a situation that’s, it was so remote in her thinking two months ago to think that we’d be playing here on national television and she’s the starting point guard at Connecticut. I think that would have been the most far fetched thing that you could ever imagine.”
Bettencourt had never been to the United States before stepping on UConn’s campus for the first week of classes at the end of August. Auriemma quipped last week that Bettencourt’s flight across the Atlantic took longer than her recruiting process and praised her willingness to take on such a challenge without hesitation. In nine days she went from planning to play for Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, Florida, to joining the Huskies.
At that point, no one could have thought Bettencourt would be playing meaningful minutes. Bueckers was hurt, but UConn still had Mühl and Fudd as its two primary ball-handlers. And prior to the Princeton game, she hadn’t. Bettencourt had come off the bench in four contests and played a total of 22 minutes. The majority of that time came in a win over Providence, when she stepped onto the court with the game already well out of reach, played 12 minutes and knocked down two triples.
Then Mühl was injured a little over seven minutes in the fourth quarter against the Tigers, never returning after being helped off the floor and ushered to the locker room. It was the Huskies’ first game without Fudd, who has been ruled out three to six weeks with a right knee injury she sustained in a loss at Notre Dame on Dec. 4, so just like that Bettencourt was the only true ball-handling guard left.
“With all the injuries that we’ve got and Nika getting hurt,” Bettencourt said postgame, “I felt like I had to step up and help the team get the ball to the other side of the floor.”
Bettencourt played nine minutes and finished with three points, two assists, one rebound and four turnovers. She nearly had a basket from the field too, but it was called off by officials.
“She’s trying to find a way out there, trying to figure out what do I gotta do,” Auriemma said after the win. “And yet when without thinking and when the adrenaline was flowing and she just had the ball in her hands she reacted instinctively.”
Auriemma didn’t love how Bettencourt played on defense, noting she was too aggressive at first with a foul and then was hesitant after that, trying to avoid another call. But he was pleased with her approach late in the game. When UConn, up three points, ran an inbounds play with 3.8 seconds left, Bettencourt came hard to the ball. She found an open spot in the corner and drew the foul to be sent to the stripe, where she made both shots to seal the victory.
“That speaks volumes about her, that she’s not afraid,” Auriemma said. “She’s not smart yet, but she’s not afraid. And I can probably fix the one but I can’t make you not afraid. So enough good things. She’s getting baptism by fire, right. I don’t think they have this kind of stuff in the Azores. I don’t think they do this kind of stuff. The kid’s never been in a situation like this in her life.”
Bettencourt said she grew a lot in that game, which was needed when she found herself in an even more daunting situation a few days later. With Mühl ruled out due to concussion protocol and Dorka Juhász set to miss her seventh consecutive game with a broken left thumb, the Huskies were down to just seven players on the road against Maryland.
“Last game on Thursday, when I got in we had a hard time,” Bettencourt said of her mindset. “So I had to help the team and learn from my mistakes last game, try not to repeat it again.”
Bettencourt played 29 minutes in the loss to the Terps, finishing with two points, two assists, three rebounds and three turnovers. She struggled at times, with UConn outscored by 15 points when she was on the floor throughout the afternoon, but helped run plays to direct the offense in what was a much more competitive game that could have been reasonably expected going into it. The Huskies held their own and even tied the game early in the fourth quarter.
“She’s a very prideful young lady and she takes things to heart and she wants to prove herself,” Auriemma said of Bettencourt after the Maryland loss. “She knew coming here was going to be really, really hard and she probably wouldn’t play a whole lot, but she wanted the challenge of seeing ‘can I?’, you know?
“And going forward next week, the following week, next month, we now are in a better position to rest some guards that maybe I didn’t feel like we were in that position before the Princeton game and tonight. So something really, really good has happened for Inês and something really good has happened for us.”
Now it’s a matter of when No. 9 UConn will get some of its roster back, most importantly Mühl, the nation’s assist leader (9.8 per game). The program said there is no specific timeline on her return, as Mühl will continuously test until she clears concussion protocol. Having this week off for finals, without a game until the Basketball Hall of Fame Classic against Florida State at Mohegan Sun Arena on Sunday, the break couldn’t come at a better time.
