By Bob Phillips Photos By Bill Harper
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| The UConn Huskies are champions... again! |
UNCASVILLE—Can you say “Five-Peat?”
Indeed, at this point, it’s legitimate to wonder if the
UConn women’s
basketball team will ever lose a game in American Athletic Conference play. After
missing the conference tourney semifinals, senior forward Gabby Williams turned in one of her patented
solid overall performances to lead the Huskies to a 70-54 victory over the No.
19-ranked University of South Florida in the American Athletic Conference title
game before 7,501 fans at the Mohegan Sun Arena on Tuesday. The game was
televised nationally on ESPN2, and streamed on ESPN3 and WatchESPN.
Napheesa Collier
and Katie Lou Sameulson each had 12 points each for the Huskies, while Azura
Stevens came off the bench to pour in 13 points. USF’s Kitija Laksa led all
scorers with 26 points. She was the only Bull to score in double digits,
however.
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| USF's Kitija Laksa led all scorers with 26 points, but was the only Bull in double digits. |
Williams had
spent the entire game on the bench during UConn's semifinal drubbing Cincinnati
on Monday after tweaking her left hip—an injury that has been bothering her all
season—in the Huskies' quarterfinal win over Tulane on Sunday. It was UConn
coach Geno Auriemma’s decision to give her the night off. Williams, however,
was committed to making a splash in the finals. And that she certainly did,
putting up 19 points, grabbing seven boards, dishing out six assists, and adding
five steals for good measure.
“[The decision to
play] was made when I woke up this morning,” said Williams. “I knew that if I
was going to make the decision to play, I would have to go out there and attack
it. I didn't want to show I'm halfway there. I was going to play like I always
do.”
Geno Auriemma had
nothing but praised by the effort given by Williams. “It was hard to take her
out tonight,” said the Hall-of-Fame coach.
Stevens earned tournament
MVP honors in leading the undefeated Huskies to their 32nd straight victory.
She became UConn’s first reserve player to win MVP since Charde Houston did it in 2008, when the Huskies
played in The Big East.
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| Lou for two! Samuelson popped in 12 |
“We don't see
Azura as someone who doesn't start for us,” Auriemma explained. “She's the same
as anyone else in the starting lineup. We choose to start a smaller lineup, but
if we ever wanted to change it wouldn't be because we didn't like the
performance of someone else, it would be because we wanted a different look. We
have a starting six.”
This was the
fourth straight year that these teams met for the AAC title. South Florida lost
the first three meetings by an average of 32 points and has never beaten UConn
in 26 all-time meetings. Then again, no one has ever beaten the Huskies conference
play since The American was formed in 2013. Overall, UConn is 101-0, including
15-0 in championship tournament play.
The Huskies led
23-20 early in the second quarter as the Bulls were able to slow down the game,
but the vaunted UConn “D” allowed South Florida to score just three more points
for the rest of the half. Katie Lou Samuelson's three-pointer just before
the buzzer staked UConn to a 14-point advantage at intermission.
“I thought we got
out to a good start out of the gate,” said South Florida coach Jose Fernandez
who broke Auriemma’s four-year reign as the AAC’s Coach of the Year. This even
though the Bulls were 0-for-3 vs. the Huskies this season, including an embarrassing
100-49 spanking at the Sun Dome in Tampa on Jan. 3. “For us, Connecticut closed
that first quarter and closed the second quarter,” he continued. “Look at final
minute of each quarter. [You’ve got to] hand it to them, the way they closed
the two quarters.''
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| Crystal Dangerfield gets a high five from Samuelson for a job well done. |
The Bulls scored
the first four points of the second half to close to within 10, but a 7-0 Husky
run put UConn up by 17. And that, folks, was pretty much all she wrote.
Not Such a
Charitable Stripe
It took just over
38 minutes for South Florida to get its first attempts at the foul line. Laksa
hit both attempts with 1:41 left in the game. Meanwhile, the Huskies were 8-for-13
from the charity stripe.
Bomb’s Away!
Laksa set a new
USF record for three-pointers in a single season with 121. The old mark, 117,
was set by Janae Stokes in the 2008-09 campaign.
Models of
Perfection
This will be the
ninth time that the Huskies will enter The Dance unbeaten. UConn has six
undefeated seasons on its resume, as well as two more undefeated regular season
and conference tournaments, only to lose in the NCAA Tournament—including last
year’s loss to Mississippi State in the national semifinals. The Huskies’ undefeated
national championship seasons were in 1995, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2014 and 2016.
This year, the
Huskies will be seeded No. 1 overall in the tournament as the only other unbeaten
regular season team, Mississippi State, was topped by South Carolina in the SEC
championship game. The Huskies drummed the Gamecocks, 83-58, in Columbia, SC,
on Feb. 1. They will most likely commence play in the Albany Region.
—With
Staff Reports
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