Article by Art Benedict
It was what everybody wanted and what everybody waited for. UConn-Notre Dame women's basketball. They can say that this matchup doesn't matter and that its only the regular season and it counts as nothing. Bah- Hum-Bug!! Anytime Notre Dame and UConn meet the intensity level goes through the roof. Its UConn vs Notre Dame. Its the Huskies vs the Irish. Its Geno vs. Muffet. However you cut it, this matchup has the whole world watching in women's college basketball. For all intense and purposes this meeting could have been for the National Championship in April. That's the kind of game this was set up to be. It looked like it was going to be a long afternoon for the Husky faithful as the Irish, led by the hot shooting of the newest Husky killer Jewell Lloyd couldn't miss and Notre Dame was up by 10 midway through the first half. But like any good prize fighter worth spit, UConn got up off the mat and not only caught the Irish with a blow to the body, but followed it up with a right to the jaw and a left to the side of the head and came away with a relatively easy 76-58 victory in front of a stunned packed house Purcell Pavilion. Geno's comments after the game? " We played really well today and won in a place that's very hard to win, against a team that is hard to beat, and our players feel really good about it". Another Geno-ism.
Morgan Tuck, who a year ago was a spectator watching the 2013-2014 team go undefeated and win yet another National Championship while recovering from knee surgery, scored 25 points and pulled down 9 rebounds in 35 minutes, shooting 12 of 19. But the X-Factor (no reference to my show on Thursday nights) was Kiah Stokes. She had a game high 18 rebounds while playing just 24 minutes in front of her parents and brother Darius, who ended up playing against the Notre Dame men as a member of Fairleigh Dickenson University that night. Breanna Stewart who has been double teamed and sometimes triple teams in past games, broke loose for 15 points and 9 rebounds of her own. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Kia Nurse had 12 points each to round out the scoring. And just like Stanford stopped UConn's winning streak of 43 games a few weeks ago, the Huskies stopped the nation's longest active home court winning streak at 34 games. They also had won 60 straight regular season games. You think this game didn't matter to both teams? You couldn't be farther from the truth. Muffet's comments? "We went soft. It was very disappointing".
So how far have the Huskies come since losing to Stanford in overtime back on Nov. 17th? Over the next four games, the Huskies allowed an average of 47.3 points and held opponents to 30.3 percent shooting. And to put an exclamation point on this victory over Notre Dame, the Irish led the nation in scoring (94.8) and scoring margin. (43.6).
And as far
as Geno and Muffet are concerned, well, they shook hands at center court before
and after the game, but make no mistake about it, they respect each other but
there is no love loss between these two.
In last
years National Championship game against UConn the Irish were without Natalie
Achonwa. This game they were without freshman Brianna Turner. Folks it wouldn't
have mattered either way. The Huskies were laser focused both then and
now. Could this be a preview of the
National Championship game in 2015? We will have to wait and see. For now the
Huskies are the top dog against the Irish. There is a lot of season left. Stay
tuned.
Next blog: Another trip down memory lane with
UConn/Duke.
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