PORTLAND, Ore. — Despite its lowest-scoring performance of the season, the No. 3-seeded UConn women’s basketball team escaped with a 53-45 win over No. 7 Duke on Saturday to advance to the Elite Eight for the 28th time in 39 seasons under coach Geno Auriemma.
The Huskies (32-5) will face No. 1 seed USC and freshman phenom JuJu Watkins in the Elite Eight on Monday (9 p.m., ESPN) with a berth to the Final Four on the line. UConn appeared in the NCAA Tournament’s final weekend for 14 consecutive seasons before an upset in last year’s Sweet 16 snapped the streak. Auriemma is 22-6 all-time in the Elite Eight.
“Our job is not finished. We’re still here for two more days and we still have one big game left to play,” senior point guard Nika Muhl said. “I think we’re trying to stay calm and stay in the moment, but of course we’ll enjoy this win. It’s a big one for us because last year we didn’t get this feeling, so me personally I’m enjoying it a lot, but our focus has to shift now to the next game.”
Duke flexed its lock-down defense early, holding the Huskies to just 10 points in the first quarter on 5-for-14 shooting from the field and 0-for-2 from 3-point range. But UConn’s defense held its own, keeping Duke to six points in the opening quarter on 3-for-13 from the field. UConn also drew two early fouls against 6-3 freshman forward Delaney Thomas, who played just two minutes in the quarter after checking in off the bench.
The Huskies’ offensive production didn’t improve much in the second, but they were consistently a step ahead of Duke. The Blue Devils were held scoreless for almost six minutes of the second quarter, finally ending the drought with 4:42 left in the half on a jump shot from Oluchi Okananwa. UConn logged only five unanswered points in that span, but it was enough to give the team a double-digit lead after two quarters.
Even with a 10-point lead, Auriemma entered the locker room at halftime on a rampage. Freshman Ashlynn Shade said the legendary coach had a simple but firm message for the team: ‘Do you want to win this game?’
“It’s definitely an adjustment, because you don’t come in as a freshman and get how to feed off of his energy,” Muhl said with a laugh. “It’s a learning process to understand what he means when he raises his voice. It took me a while to realize that when he does stuff like that, it’s because he expects the best. He thinks that you can do more, and that’s a compliment. It’s something you have to take to heart and say ‘I got it, Coach.'”
"We were exercising and and then we decided to have a cigarette and then we didn't feel like exercising anymore" 😂
Geno Auriemma talks about the difficulty his team had scoring and the Huskies nearly losing the lead in the fourth quarter: pic.twitter.com/IAIU6eRhYt
— UConn on SNY (@SNYUConn) March 31, 2024
Naismith Player of the Year finalist Paige Bueckers led the scoring for the Huskies with 24 points, though it was her first game with fewer than 25 since the start of the Big East Tournament. All-American forward Aaliyah Edwards also upheld her end of the dynamic duo, recording 12 points, seven rebounds, two blocks and two steals. She was by far UConn’s most efficient scorer making 6-for-7 from the field.
However, Edwards picked up a third foul with under two minutes left in the first half, forcing Auriemma to make his first substitution of the game. Bueckers was also assessed two fouls before halftime, and it showed in the Huskies’ hesitancy on the boards. Duke out-rebounded UConn 23-16 in the first half, and 5-11 Muhl was the Huskies’ top contributor with four.
Despite foul trouble, Auriemma went just six players deep with his rotation. He sat Edwards for 12 minutes with redshirt freshman Ice Brady on the floor, then gave Shade a two-minute break late in the fourth to play the bigs together. Every other starter played all 40 minutes, and fatigue started to show in the fourth quarter as Duke closed the Huskies’ lead to as few as five points in the final minute. A long jump shot by Edwards followed by a defensive rebound helped seal the victory for the Huskies with seconds to play.
“The fatigue factor became a big issue, because it forced us to change our game plan,” Auriemma said. “We got up 20 because we just pushed it, pushed it, pushed it, and then I felt like okay, we need a breather here or we’re not going to be able to finish the game … We were exercising, and then we decided to have a cigarette, and then we didn’t feel like exercising anymore, so it’s hard for us to get back into the flow of things.”
UConn finished shooting 40% from the field and 18.8% from 3-point range, and Edwards was the only player to shoot above 50%. KK Arnold emerged as the Huskies’ No. 3 threat against Duke with 12 points, three rebounds and four assists. She was also a menace on defense, logging a team-high five steals towards Duke’s 23 total turnovers. UConn scored 23 points off turnovers while giving up just six points off 13 lost possessions.
“Coming into the game, Coach said we wanted to ‘red’ everything, which is our pressure defense where we try to deny and take away passes and play super aggressive,” Shade said. “I think that helped us get a lot of the turnovers especially early in the game when it felt like it was so back-and-forth, so that was definitely a goal coming in.”
