The adage goes that defense travels.
It travels better when you only need to take it on a train ride down to Brooklyn and not on a three hour flight halfway across the country, however – 26 turnovers and a stifling 49% mark allowed from the field better.
Defense was the difference in top-ranked UConn women’s basketball’s (12-0) 90-64 win over No. 11 Iowa (10-2) at the Barclays Center on Saturday.
Shrink-wrapped on-ball attention, a commanding perimeter presence and a penchant for intercepting Hawkeye passes gave the Huskies a multi-possession cushion within the first 120 seconds of the game – and it stuck until the final buzzer.
Connecticut led for over 38 minutes in the 26-point dismantling of the team that ended its season in the Final Four two years ago, never allowing the Hawkeyes to score more than five consecutive points while cashing in 41 of its own in transition.
“Our goal this year has been to have a defensive identity,” Azzi Fudd said. “To be in passing lanes and make things hard for other teams.”
The Huskies held an Iowa offense that averaged over 83 points and 43 rebounds per game to 64 and 34, respectively.
It also got 50 combined points from Fudd and Sarah Strong — 21 made field goals and 10 steals in the effort as well – which spurred the Husky offense to its sixth 90-point showing of the season.
Strong’s seven rebounds and six steals both led the team while her 23 points, which spread from the baseline to behind the 3-point line, ranked second among all scorers.
The sophomore forward notched a 20-point, three-rebound, three-assist, five-steal first half and buoyed the Husky offense for the better part of 20 minutes with a slew of confident drives and transition runs.
“There’s an aura that she has where it appears she’s never in a rush to do anything,” Geno Auriemma said. “The game is in her soul.”
Fudd, meanwhile, didn’t have it as easy. A 3-of-9 start from the field left the graduate wing with six at the break – a season low against high-major teams.
“Are you going to make any tonight?” Auriemma recalled asking Fudd at the half.
She did – five of “them” along with six two-pointers.
It started with an open look from the right wing to get her on the board from deep. It quickly progressed to Fudd scoring 10 of 14 points in a five minute stretch; two 3-pointers, a put-back and transition basket that extended the Husky lead to 28 points.
“Azzi can do two things [as a shooter],” Auriemma added. “Azzi can give you a big lead that might be insurmountable or she can put a game away. Today she didn’t give us the big lead because she got nothing but open shots and missed them, which is human.”
The Huskies built their “insurmountable lead” through other means – bigger means.
Brooklyn native Serah Williams started the afternoon’s scoring with a turnaround hook over Hannah Stuelke in the low post. It set the table for what would be a team photo in the paint for the Huskies, who outscored the frontcourt-oriented Hawkeyes 40-24 down low.
“I thought tonight was one of her better performances,” Auriemma said. “The last three weeks or so, she’s made a lot of progress.”
Williams finished with seven points, four rebounds and three blocks in her homecoming game, contributing to the bottlenecking post presence instituted by the Huskies.
But it wasn’t perfect in the early going. Both teams put the ball on the ground as they looked to flex their sizable frontcourt muscles. The Hawkeyes turned the ball over (5) more times than they shot it (4) in the first five minutes while the Huskies started 1-of-5 from the field.
The early game war of attrition quickly gave way to a Husky run, which was headed by a Strong 3-pointer (her first of three) and KK Arnold pick off that resulted in an Ashlynn Shade put-back bucket to put UConn up 11-3 at the first media break.
It was all the Huskies needed to fend off the Hawkeyes, who dropped to 1-2 against ranked teams.
Every time the Hawkeyes would claw back within two possessions, Connecticut rattled off six consecutive, nine in a row or 15 out of 17 to preserve its lead.
Most of that production came from Strong, who entered the second quarter having scored 18 of the team’s 35 points.
Blanca Quiñonez and Arnold anchored the Husky press, which had broken the Hawkeyes’ back by the end of the first half.
“What I tried to get our team to do was play the five people on the floor and not the ranking or the tradition,” Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said. “But when you get out there and you’re playing UConn, all of a sudden, that pressure can rattle you.”
The Huskies took a 42-31 lead into the locker room and only expanded it as the second half went on, thanks in part to Fudd’s aforementioned explosion.
Connecticut held Iowa to 13 points in the third quarter to put the game away, constricting the Hawkeyes to five made field goals and seven turnovers in the process. It emptied the bench and got a litany of points from Kayleigh Heckel, Allie Ziebell and Kelis Fisher to keep its advantage north of 25 points, making it the second time in seven days the Huskies defeated a top-20 team by 25 or more.