UNCASVILLE — Behind a dominant performance from superstars Paige Bueckers and Sarah Strong, the UConn women’s basketball team earned a berth in the Big East Tournament championship with an 82-54 win over Villanova in the semifinals Sunday.
Bueckers logged her second straight 20-piece of the tournament, finishing with 23 points plus a team-high six assists shooting 10-for-17 from the field. She also went 2-for-4 on 3-pointers after going 0-for-4 in UConn’s quarterfinal win over St. John’s.
Strong recorded the second postseason double-double of her career in as many games with 20 points and a season-high 16 rebounds against the Wildcats. She scored at least 20 points in all three meetings with Villanova this year, and the double-double was her eighth of the season. Strong was also a force on the defensive end, leading the Huskies with three steals and two blocks.
There was a palpable shift in Bueckers’ energy after she was fouled by Villanova’s Maddie Burke four minutes into the first quarter. The redshirt senior started 0-for-2, but she got to her feet after the foul wearing a grin that seemed to say to the Wildcats, ‘You’ll regret that.’ She made good on that promise, shooting 4-for-4 for nine points over the final six minutes of the first quarter and adding a pair of assists.
Villanova found an answer in sophomore guard Maddie Webber, who scored 11 points in the first with six over the last three minutes of the quarter. UConn also struggled to disrupt the Wildcats defensively forcing a single turnover in the quarter and just three in the first half. After leading by as many as eight, UConn entered the second quarter ahead just 16-15.
The start of the second was back and forth with six lead changes until Bueckers put the team on her shoulders. The superstar scored 12 points and shot 5-for-6 in the second to enter halftime with 21 of UConn’s 47 points. She was directly responsible for all four 3-pointers the Huskies made in the first half, hitting a pair herself and dishing assists to star guard Azzi Fudd and forward Ice Brady for the other two. Brady’s three was just her third make of the year on her first attempt of the postseason.
“(Paige) takes everything I say as a suggestion, so I’ve got to cross my fingers and hope that it lands in the right place,” coach Geno Auriemma quipped postgame. “But when the game got close, when they took the lead, I think that more than anything I could say was the turning point for her. At that point, she just started playing and started taking it upon herself … It was the first time in quite some while where she actually just took the ball and wanted to play one-on-one with whoever was guarding her, and I think that’s what we’ve been striving for.”
The Huskies managed to get the Wildcats in some early foul trouble, keeping Burke on the bench with two for most of the second after she hit back-to-back 3-pointers early in the quarter. Villanova guard Ryanne Allen also had two fouls at halftime, and Webber was held scoreless in the second quarter after her hot start.
Strong secured her double-double less than two minutes into the second half, rebounding her own miss and putting it back for a layup to secure her 10th rebound. She accounted for all four of UConn’s offensive rebounds in the first half and finished the game with five of the team’s 10.
“She’s tremendously talented obviously, and she has a knack for where the ball is and where it’s going. Not everybody has that,” Auriemma said. “She impacts the game in every single area, whether she’s defending somebody and gets a steal, whether it’s a blocked shot, whether it’s a defensive rebound, an offensive rebound. I always like to (say) that we don’t want to play with both Sarah and Paige on the bench … That’s how important she is, is I’m okay with Paige being out of the game as long as Sarah’s in the game, because I think she’s more like having two or three players out there instead of just one.”
UConn’s other scorers started to come alive after halftime as Bueckers was held to just two field goal attempts without points in the third quarter. Strong put up five points in five minutes, and fifth-year point guard Kaitlyn Chen hit her first 3-pointer since Feb. 27 off a Bueckers assist that gave UConn its first 20-point lead of the game. Fudd also joined Bueckers and Strong in double digits going 4-for-4 at the free throw line.
But it was the Huskies’ defensive breakthrough that headlined the third quarter. They held Villanova to just six points without a single made field goal, forcing four turnovers and capitalizing with five points off of them. Both of the Wildcats’ leading scorers, Burke and freshman guard Jasmine Bascoe, were sidelined much of the quarter after each picking up four fouls.
Bueckers scored her first points of the second half on a jump shot to start the fourth quarter, and she also assisted Strong on the bucket that got the freshman to 20 points. Fudd made her second 3-pointer of the game soon after, finishing with 14 points shooting 4-for-9 from the field with four rebounds and two steals. UConn held the Wildcats to a combined 17 points in the entire second half and gave up a single 3-pointer after allowing five in the first.
“You’ve got to play at a different level defensively in March than you do during a regular year, and that’s not the easiest thing in the world to do,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “I’m glad they took some ownership of it. That’s what they’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to be prideful in your defense. You want to be somebody that can be counted on on the defensive end, and I just think that sometimes we get a little bit over-confident. We get a little bit too comfortable. And this is not the time of the year for that.”
