STORRS, Conn. (WTNH) — There will not be a three-peat for the UConn men’s basketball team. The two-time defending champs fell behind down the stretch to the Florida Gators Sunday. But the women are riding high after a huge win on Saturday. They play again on Monday night to get into the Sweet 16.
It was an up-and-down weekend for UConn fans. The men are out, but the women dominated the first game of the tournament.
Let’s start with the women. They put on a clinic against Arkansas State on Saturday. They held the Red Wolves to just 5 points in the first quarter.
The Huskies were up by 50 at the half. The final score was 103-34. On the offensive side, UConn was making great passes for layups all game. On the defensive side, the Huskies had 13 blocked shots and 12 steals.
“We knew how great they were offensively in terms of wanting to get 3s up, so we were just trying to contest everything, make everything difficult,” Paige Bueckers said.
“I mean, we played great defense today. We’ve been working on getting in the passing lanes in practice, and sometimes we carry that over into games, and sometimes we don’t. Today we did. We’ve got to keep that up the entire rest of this run, but I mean, it makes it really hard for teams to be able to score and run their offense when we’re doing that,” Azzi Fudd said.
As for the men. They looked good Friday in a win over Oklahoma, but then they faced the number one seed in the region with Florida.
The Huskies were down at first but came back to tie the game at the half. UConn pulled ahead by seven at one point, but a few missed shots by the Huskies and some clutch shooting by Walter Clayton Junior meant Florida pulled away at the end. A last-second 3 by Liam McNeeley cut the Gator lead to two, and that is where it stayed, 77-75.
The women will try to continue their dominance tonight right here at Gampel as they play 10th-seeded South Dakota State at 8 p.m.
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