A new holy trinity at UConn — Nicki Collen talks Baylor, WNBA

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Both of these dynamics were on display Saturday night, when the Huskies absolutely destroyed a quality Louisville team, 85-52, in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. UConn did this without a typical Paige Bueckers performance — she shot just 2-for-11 from the field — while Azzi Fudd played only 18 minutes, forced from the game due to a knee injury.

But Sarah Strong? She continued her historic early pace, with 21 points on 10 shots, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, a steal and a block. Emily Adler did a great job of explaining how she did it here.

“Yeah, I think Sarah’s more like a guard than any of the post players that I played with,” Bueckers said following the game. “She can play inside, outside on the perimeter. She handles the ball very well. She passes very well. So all that to say: there’s not a lot of things that Sarah can’t do.”

Hearing Louisville head coach Jeff Walz speak about Strong though, I was struck less by his evident respect for her game, and more about how resigned he was to the notion that with Fudd and Bueckers on the UConn roster as well, he didn’t have a lot of options to try and limit Strong at all.

“I mean, I mean, as good as Sarah is, and she’s really talented, our number one goal is try to stop and contain Paige,” Walz said. “So the nice thing that she has is, on the scouting report, she’s right up there. But your first one’s Paige… And then Azzi is possibly number two. So she’s a great player. But our first and second best defenders were trying to defend some other ones.”

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It reminded me of nothing so much as the way Scott Rueck, Oregon State’s head coach, answered me when I asked him about leaving Morgan Tuck essentially unguarded for large portions of the national semifinal game against Connecticut back in 2016.

“I mean, it’s hard to take everything they want to do away, because the minute that you go get her, they’re dunking the ball at the rim. It’s a team that shoots 70 percent inside the paint, inside six feet, right?” Rueck told me that night in Indianapolis. “And so what do you want to give up? So I thought we could have done a little better job of showing a little bit more at Tuck than we did certainly, but you also hope maybe she misses one. And so that’s part of the gamble with this team.”

So as much as it matters to hear Auriemma say that Strong is his most impactful big since Breanna Stewart, quite a statement for a program that’s deployed Napheesa Collier, Aaliyah Edwards and other pros since, I was struck by Auriemma’s definition of what made his greatest teams elite when I brought up this Rueck answer to him.

“So the best teams we’ve ever had at Connecticut, they were three-pronged,” Auriemma said. “Okay, whether you go back to Kara Wolters, Rebecca Lobo and Nykesha Sales, or Stefanie Dolson and Bria Hartley and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, or Stewie, Tuck and Moriah [Jefferson] and one of the best-ever was, you know, Renee [Montgomery], Maya [Moore] and Tina [Charles].

“And people would ask me, what makes this team so special? I said, ‘Well, we have the absolute best point guard, we have the absolute best center, and then we have the best player in the country.’ So when you can come at people with those three things, and you have a chance to win every single game you play, and we’re fortunate that we have something like that [this season]. We won’t know until later on whether it’s the equivalent of that, whether we’ve got something like that going for us right now.”

As previously mentioned, we’ve simply not been able to see what Bueckers and Fudd can do healthy at the same time and surrounded by depth very much in their careers, and a grim reminder of that came from Fudd’s injury on Saturday night. Fortunately, Auriemma’s optimism that night seems to have proved warranted, with the diagnosis coming back as a mild knee sprain, her time until return estimated in a week, rather than the end-of-season nightmare.

It robs us of a chance to see what this trinity could do against one of the few teams who can throw some legitimate answers at all three stars on Thursday night, though. The sensational backcourt of Notre Dame, with Hannah Hidalgo and Olivia Miles, are plus-plus defenders who could each be expected to take on Bueckers and Fudd. And Liatu King, the Pitt transfer, is going to be the biggest challenge yet for Strong. Now Niele Ivey has the luxury of choosing in the backcourt, and using more help defenders against Strong. It is by no means an easy task. But it simply means she doesn’t have to give up on stopping Strong entirely, the way Rueck once did with Tuck.

Ultimately, UConn is a legitimate national title contender, between the depth the roster hasn’t experience in years and the star power of even some of the trio of Bueckers, Fudd and Strong. But the fact that Auriemma is comparing what this team can be to his very best, if everyone stays healthy, tells you that the ceiling in Storrs is higher than those deeply disappointing teams of the past eight years, with a paltry six Final Fours in seven possible seasons to their name. Perhaps the group can even rally and win enough to save Geno’s job.

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This week in women’s basketball

I see you, Temple!

If WNBA comes to Philly, this Sixer will be in the crowd.

Bring tissues for this one.

If PJ Brown says Arizona must do something, Arizona should listen!

The Golden State Valkyries have a team.

The Toronto Tempo have a name.

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Five at The IX: Nicki Collen, Baylor

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