What Geno Auriemma said about UConn’s loss to South Carolina
Connecticut dominated its series against South Carolina in women’s basketball for the first decade.
But the Gamecocks have turned the tide on the Huskies, winning four straight in the series and five of the last six after Sunday’s 83-65 win at Colonial Life Arena.
The 83 points were the most the Gamecocks have scored against UConn in the 14 games the two have played against each other.
After the game, UConn coach Geno Auriemma talked about the loss and the team’s lack of depth. Here are some of the highlights of what Auriemma said.
Gamecocks’ style of play a challenge
“Yeah, they are much different team than some of the previous teams obviously that we played down here.
“And their style of play is different, not just their depth is different, but their style of play is different. You know, they’re able to keep the pressure on because they can bring more bodies off the bench, but they have the ability to put pressure on you from the perimeter as well as inside. Way more so than any other time that I remember.”
USC capitalizes on UConn’s errors
“I thought that our transition defense kind of fell apart for long stretches. And they took advantage of every mistake that we made. I thought some of our defensive stuff again was ... I just keep going back to, if you’re going to win a game like this, you either have to have more players with better talent, or you’re gonna have to play a much smarter game and get some help from the other team. And we did not play a very smart game in the first half. And we certainly didn’t get any help from them because they took advantage of every mistake that we made
“In the second half, we fixed a bunch of things, and I think it was like a four-point difference in the second half. We kind of got a bunch of things squared away but it might have been a little too late.”
UConn’s lack of depth, looking ahead to postseason
“Ever since all the stuff that happened with our roster, that’s the furthest thing (NCAA Tournament) from my mind. I couldn’t care less about that. You know, we have a bunch of young guys playing college basketball for the first time and they’ve gotten better you know each and every week. And we need to make sure that they keep getting better every week. We have to to do more things right than ever before because of the situation that we’re in. And we’re not going to get any bigger, we’re not going to add any more players and we’re not going to get any taller.
“But we need to get a little smarter. If we want to be able to win some of these games come March, we’ve got some work to do. Thought we competed … but there were just times when we were just worn down. Today, there’s not much more than we could do. Those guys did play their brains out. But when you get as many open looks as we got, you need to make most of those in a game like this.”
