Down goes No. 4.
No. 7 USC closed out the game and got the 72-70 win Saturday against fourth-ranked Connecticut in the XL Center in Hartford, Conn.
The Women of Troy (11-1) led for 38 minutes and eight seconds, mounting a nine-point lead after one quarter, a 14-point lead after two quarters, and an 18-point lead in the third quarter before the Huskies (10-2) began their comeback.
Trojans sophomore guard JuJu Watkins finished the game with 25 points on 9-of-16 shooting, including going 3 of 4 from behind the arc and 4 of 5 from the free throw line. She also had six rebounds, five assists, three blocks and a steal. Kiki Iriafen added a 16-point, 11-rebound double-double on 8-of-19 shooting, plus a game-high six assists.
The duo is looking like a strong one-two punch for the Women of Troy.
“I think any time you have somebody you’re trying to limit, trying to minimize how many opportunities they get, you’re going to have to give up something else. And the decisions that we make sometimes backfire, but the other team has to make it backfire,” Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma said after the game. “The dilemma comes when they start making shots and the guy you’re trying to limit is still getting shots off. So, credit to them because they took advantage of what we wanted to do.”
UConn’s Paige Bueckers finished the game with 22 points on 9-of-22 shooting, including 2 of 8 from three. Freshman Sarah Strong had a 22-point, 13-rebound double-double on 8-of-15 shooting. She also had a team-high five assists, four steals and a block.
The Trojans limited the Huskies to 35.5 percent shooting, with only two-of-nine three-point attempts dropping in the first half. In the second half, Connecticut made eight shots in each quarter — half of its attempts in the third quarter and 53.3 percent of attempts in the fourth quarter. It didn’t shoot the three much better, but the Huskies made four triples that helped get them back in the game.
At the end, the stats told one story and the film told another story.
“I’m just really proud of our team. I can’t say it in enough ways,” head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said after the game. “When we lost to Notre Dame, it would have been really easy to blame people, to fracture apart, to listen to outside stuff. I said, ‘Hey, as long as we stick together, this can make us better.’ And it has. It has in every way.”
Here are five takeaways from USC’s win over Connecticut:
