If the fifth-ranked UConn women’s basketball team (26-3, 16-0) defeats No. 22 Creighton (23-4, 15-1) at the XL Center on Thursday night, the Huskies will claim a fifth consecutive Big East regular season championship since rejoining the conference before the 2020-2021 season.
If the Blue Jays storm into Hartford and defeat the Huskies, pitting both teams at 16-1 in conference play, the conference title will be decided by this weekend’s results from UConn home versus Marquette and Creighton home versus Villanova.
Connecticut has won five in a row by an average of 35 points since falling to Tennessee in Knoxville, including wins over No. 4 South Carolina (29 points) and Seton Hall (42 points).
Creighton has not lost since Jan. 25, when the Huskies ran away in the second quarter during the team’s first meeting in Omaha. The Blue Jays have won 22 of 24 after starting the season 1-2, losing only to then-undefeated UCLA and sixth-ranked UConn.
UConn holds a 10-0 advantage over Creighton in the all-time series, dating back to 2014. The Blue Jays have come close on multiple occasions, most notably in 2023 when the Huskies held off a furious third quarter comeback to escape with a 62-60 victory in Gampel Pavillion.
The Blue Jays are powered by the scintillating scoring duo of Lauren Jensen (18.3 ppg) and Morgan Maly (17.5), with tertiary scoring coming from sharpshooter Molly Mogensen and junior guard Kiani Lockett.
Jensen sports one of the best raw stat lines in the conference—and perhaps the country— with career high averages in points (18.3), rebounds (4.1), assists (3.9) and steals (1.3). The wiry fifth year guard is an uber-consistent scorer, notching above 20 points on 13 occasions this season.
Maly may pose a bigger threat to a Connecticut team thin in the frontcourt, as both Morgan Cheli and Ice Brady are sidelined with injuries. Maly’s average of 5.7 rebounds per game spearheads a Blue Jay glass attack rebounding in the 87th percentile nationally on the defensive end (27.2 defensive rebounds per game).
“I feel like we have some [respect], but not as much as I feel like we deserve. Part of that is because we haven’t knocked off UConn yet,” said Maly at Big East media day in October.
The fifth-year senior’s surly 14 points and nine rebounds played a vital role in keeping the Blue Jays around during the team’s first meeting in January.
Creighton will find its scoring primarily through Jensen and Maly, who account for 48.5% of the team’s points on average, but what will it get from its third and fourth options?
Mogensen posted a 14-point, seven rebound line when the Huskies visited Omaha last month, hitting on two three pointers and dishing four assists in a hardy effort from the wing. The senior guard is another veteran presence on one of the most experienced starting lineups in the Big East.
Perhaps the joker in Creighton’s deck, Kiani Lockett, missed the Blue Jays’ last game against the Huskies.
Lockett has been a surehanded starter in her third year with the program, averaging 6.1/3.3/2.2 as a secondary scoring option. Lockett missed January’s game with an injury but has played in every game since, taking on a facilitator role alongside Jensen in the backcourt.
These teams’ profiles are so similar from an analytical perspective that it took me over 15 minutes of filtering to find a splitting difference. Both offenses have operated at a top 15 level nationally (UConn No. 1, Creighton No. 13), both teams shoot the ball efficiently (UConn 58.2% EFG, Creighton 53.5% EFG) and both teams rank inside the top five in turnover rate (third and fifth, respectively).
Most emphatically, I noticed, Creighton allows opponents to shoot 47.8% from inside the arc (269th in the country) and ranks in the bottom 30 nationally in offensive rebound percentage (25.2). Exploiting these two glaring weaknesses will be crucial for the Huskies, who shoot 58.5% from two-point range and rebound defensively at a top 25 rate in the country (27.6%).
It is also worth noting that the Huskies may crank up the offensive tempo to out-gun Creighton’s relatively slow pace (221st in the country) to build an early lead, much like how January’s game played out.
And the final key: bench points will be at a premium. Connecticut’s 20.8 bench points per game dwarfs Creighton’s 15.8 (41st percentile nationally). Tiring the Blue Jays out with tempo and getting the starters out of the game will give Connecticut an offensive advantage.