{"id":54,"date":"2015-03-12T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T01:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewcaplan.wordpress.com\/?p=54"},"modified":"2015-04-17T03:48:19","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T03:48:19","slug":"bulls-fall-to-top-ranked-huskies-in-regular-season-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/2015\/03\/12\/bulls-fall-to-top-ranked-huskies-in-regular-season-finale\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulls fall to top-ranked Huskies in regular-season finale"},"content":{"rendered":"
Published in The Crow’s Nest March 2015<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In what was their closest\u00a0conference game of the\u00a0season, the Connecticut Huskies women\u2019s basketball team defeated South Florida\u00a0by 23 points, capping off the regular season.\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/div>\n
\n

The Huskies (29-1, 18-0) have pummeled through opponents all season long with an average 50.2 margin of victory in conference play prior to Monday\u2019s 88-63 victory\u00a0against the USF Bulls.<\/p>\n

They are in the midst of a hunt for a third consecutive national championship. They are riding a 28-game win streak.<\/p>\n

But UConn head coach Geno Auriemma still thinks there is room for improvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe score is irrelevant,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cWhat I\u2019m measuring my team up against is, we went four and a half minutes without scoring in one stretch. Well, if we\u2019re supposed to be the best team in the country, how do you do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Junior forward Breanna Stewart led UConn by scoring a season-high 29 points in the game, recording 11 rebounds and had seven blocks, a career high.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the way we\u2019ve progressed and the way we\u2019ve grown as individuals, that goes a long way and that\u2019s going to help us out a lot going into the conference and NCAA tournament,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

Stewart, 20, has been crowned the NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player for the past two seasons and was named the 2014 ESPNW and AP player of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, Stewie is the best player in the country\u2026\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cYou know how I know Stewie\u2019s the best player in the country? There are 365 Division I coaches. If you put a gun to their head and say \u2018you can only have one player in America, who would you take?\u2019 And anybody who took anybody other than Stewie, they should just pull the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stewart agreed with her coach and is ready to prove it for a third straight\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I want to hear and that\u2019s the kind of confidence I have in myself,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cI\u2019m working to be the best player in the country and I want to show people I\u2019m the best player in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the Bulls losing by double digits, it was the second most points scored on UConn this season.<\/p>\n

\u201c(USF) is a really good team,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cThere\u2019s some teams we play and they really don\u2019t have the people or the coaching to keep up with us, but these guys are good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auriemma, a nine-time NCAA championship coach, credited Bulls guard Courtney Williams, who scored 26 points in the loss, by saying she is one of the hardest players in the country to guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s not easy to just keep bottled up for long stretches at a time,\u201d Auriemma said. \u201cShe\u2019s got her mid-range game as good as anybody\u2019s that I\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n

Williams led the American Athletic Conference (AAC) in scoring and ranked 20th nationally (in front of Stewart), averaging 20.7 points per game.<\/p>\n

The Bulls (24-6, 15-3) set a school record for the most wins in a regular season and will head into AAC tournament as the No. 2 seed, hoping to get another shot at the top-ranked Huskies.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully we play them two more times,\u201d Williams said, thinking about a national championship. \u201cI\u2019m excited, I\u2019m ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published in The Crow’s Nest March 2015 In what was their closest\u00a0conference game of the\u00a0season, the Connecticut Huskies women\u2019s basketball team defeated South Florida\u00a0by 23 points, capping off the regular season.\u00a0 The Huskies (29-1, 18-0) have pummeled through opponents all season long with an average 50.2 margin of victory in conference play prior to Monday\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,4,5,6,7,17,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-54","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-breana-stewart","8":"tag-bulls","9":"tag-courtney-williams","10":"tag-geno-auriemma","11":"tag-huskies","12":"tag-uconn","13":"tag-usf","14":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digifolio.me\/andrewcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}