No. 2 UConn falls to No. 1 South Carolina in inaugural Battle 4 Atlantis women’s basketball tournament championship
For three quarters of Monday’s championship game of the inaugural Battle 4 Atlantis women’s basketball tournament, UConn coach Geno Auriemma was actually pleased with what he saw from his No. 2 Huskies against top-ranked South Carolina. It wasn’t pretty, but the Huskies executed their game plan to Auriemma’s liking and trailed by only three going into the fourth quarter.
And that’s when things spiraled for the Huskies.
UConn couldn’t handle the Gamecocks’ uptick in defensive pressure and was outscored 16-3 to fall 73-57 in the tournament championship game in what is expected to be an early preview of a Women’s Final Four or national title game.
In front of a crowd of 1,171, Auriemma’s squad (3-1) was handed its first loss of the season, while the Gamecocks (6-0) have all but secured the No. 1 spot in the AP Top 25 women’s college basketball rankings for another week when the delayed poll is released on Tuesday. UConn is now 22-4 in 1-vs.-2 games.
Sophomore Paige Bueckers led the Huskies with 19 points, all in the first three quarters. She and the rest of the team went 1-for-10 from the field in the final 10 minutes. Redshirt senior Evina Westbrook, who finished with 14 points, delivered UConn’s only field goal in the final 12 1/2 minutes of the game.
“The combination of their defensive pressure in the fourth quarter and our inability to handle that pressure is basically the game,” Auriemma said. “We just ran out of gas. We just fell apart.”
“To be honest, they punched us. We fell. We didn’t punch back,” said UConn senior Christyn Williams, who finished with 10 points. “We had a heck of a first half. Things were flowing offensively and defensively. It was just the fourth quarter really. They hit some big shots, and we couldn’t get it going offensively.”
After the game, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley went as far as to call her squad the “best and deepest” defensive team she’s ever coached.
Aliyah Boston (22 points, 15 rebounds) and Zia Cooke (17 points) did the bulk of the damage for the Gamecocks. With Boston leading the way, the Gamecocks dominated the glass 42-25, had 19 offensive rebounds and scored 17 second-chance points. Per Her Hoop Stats, the Huskies’ 37.3% rebounding rate was their lowest since at least 2009-10, as far back as the database goes.
The Gamecocks also successfully limited the Huskies to just 3-for-8 shooting from 3-point land. For a team that relies a lot on Bueckers (1-for-3 on 3s) and other guards to hit shots from the perimeter, that spelled trouble.
“They’re a better team than us right now,” Auriemma said.
Early on, it looked like the Huskies could run away with it. After falling behind 6-0, they rattled off a 20-2 run to go up by 12. With the team largely running in transition, Bueckers and Westbrook got going offensively, and Westbrook’s four-point play at the 4:55 mark not only extended UConn’s lead to five but sent Cooke to the bench with two fouls. Huskies senior Olivia Nelson-Ododa came up huge with some timely blocks, drawing a charge and making her presence known with her interior defense.
South Carolina answered by scoring the final six points of the quarter before UConn’s 8-1 run at the beginning of the second put them back ahead by a game-high 13 points. Thanks to their dominance on the offensive glass and UConn slowing down on offense, the Gamecocks ended the half on a 10-2 run to pull within three off Destanni Henderson’s layup.
South Carolina stormed ahead to start the second half, taking advantage of some bad UConn turnovers on inbounding plays to go up by six. Williams started looking to get to the rim, helping UConn pull within two.
Sophomore Aaliyah Edwards, who struggled in the first half, came through with a big defensive rebound and fast-break drive to the rim to briefly give UConn the edge again toward the end of the third, but it was South Carolina who entered the fourth ahead following a 3 from Destiny Littleton, the first of two clutch shots she made.
The Gamecocks scored six unanswered points to start the fourth. They held UConn scoreless from the field from the 2:39 mark of the third until the 5:01 mark of the fourth, when Westbrook broke the drought with a 3. Littleton responded on the next play with a trey of her own, and Henderson hit two free throws with 4:03 to play to give the Gamecocks a double-figure lead the Huskies could not erase.
“For 30 minutes, I thought we were really, really, really good. And then the last 10 minutes, they were better,” Auriemma said. “They were better than us defensively. They were better than us offensively. They were better than us rebounding the ball. For 30 minutes, we were better and then for 10, the 10 that mattered the most, they were.”
Still, the overarching takeaway from the Bahamas was not one of panic. It’s November, UConn’s fourth game, and Auriemma said he’d be more worried if the loss happened in February. The measuring stick will be brought back out when these teams square off again in Columbia, South Carolina, on Jan. 27.
“We’d much rather have this ‘L’ in November than later in the season in March,” Williams said. “We’re just going to take it and learn from it, and that’s really all that we can do.”
Auriemma may be one to fixate on flaws more than successes, but he did warn this: Progress between now and March, for this team in particular, won’t happen overnight.
“The team you saw today, four months from now, it could be a completely different team. That’s the goal. And that’s generally how the season goes,” Auriemma said. “This team? This team’s got some work to do if that’s going to happen. We’re going to have to work really, really hard for that to happen. It’s not going to come easy for this team.”
UConn injury update
UConn junior forward Aubrey Griffin missed her fourth-straight game with a high-ankle sprain and has yet to make an appearance this season. Auriemma said the Huskies are hoping she can begin fully participating in practices next week.
Alexa Philippou can be reached at aphilippou@courant.com.
