Napheesa Collier has been on fire and will look to ride her momentum into Wednesday night’s matchup against ECU. Photo by Nick Hampton/The Daily Campus
The UConn women’s basketball team will play their first home game on Wednesday since losing 69-78 to No. 2 Louisville last Thursday night and dropping to No. 5 in the AP Top 25 poll for the first time since 2007.
So far this season, UConn is 19-2 and 8-0 in the AAC.
On Saturday afternoon, the Huskies grinded out a 65-55 win against Cincinnati. The 10-point deficit matched the closest margin of victory for UConn in the teams’ 20 game series.
“We got a lot of things missing if you are talking about a national championship team,” head coach Geno Auriemma said after the loss at Louisville. “There’s a lot of things missing on our team that maybe we can fix. Some years you can, and some years you just can’t, fix them. We got about a month to figure it out.”
A bright spot in the matchup against Cincinnati was senior Napheesa Collier reaching the 2,000-point mark. Collier is the fifth Husky to amass 2,000 points along with 1,000 rebounds.
Earlier this week, Collier along with Katie Lou Samuelson and Crystal Dangerfield were named to the Wooden Award Top 20 Watch List. The Wooden Award is given to the most exceptional women’s college basketball player in a season.
Wednesday’s game against ECU will be a stepping stone for the Huskies as they try to get back into the groove of playing as one unit.
“We have some growing up to do,” Dangerfield told SNY’s Justine Ward. “We have a lot to work on, and we just have to make sure that we are all on the same page. There are times where we get off track, and we have to make sure that we’re all together out there.”
The last time UConn played was in January when the Huskies routed the Pirates 82-38. So far this season, ECU is 11-10 and 2-6 in conference play.
Earlier this season, ECU head coach Heather Macy resigned at the conclusion of an internal review of the program. Macy finished her ECU tenure as the winningest coach in program history. Former assistant coach Nicole Mealing was named the Pirates’ acting head coach on Dec. 26.
The Huskies will look to keep themselves undefeated in conference play at 7 p.m. against ECU. The game can be watched on SNY or ESPN3.
Mariana Dominguez is a staff writer for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at mariana.dominguez@uconn.edu.