UConn Defeats UCLA; Insights from South Carolina Game

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00:00No different for Gino or Riema and the UConn Huskies who take down UCLA and

00:05certainly do not let your eyes deceive you. I do appreciate none of the big

00:10publications even attempting to say UConn upsets UCLA despite being a two

00:16seed, a seven and a half point favorite in that game. Coach, I will start with the

00:22South Carolina-Texas game. What was your biggest takeaway from that matchup with

00:27the Gamecocks winning and covering 74-57? Well, it's obviously the bench play when

00:32you look at South Carolina. I really thought the play of, honestly, Joyce

00:35Edwards and Malaysia for a while, particularly first quarter, second

00:39quarter, is really key. They got off to a really slow start offensively. Once those

00:43two kind of got rolling, it helped. Obviously, you know, the play of Papau

00:47to hit a couple of threes late first quarter, late first half, early second half

00:51were key. And Madison Booker, you know, came up getting that third foul in the

00:56second quarter. Mick Schaefer, a hell of a coach, not getting her out of the game

00:59offensively. Really turned that game. It was only a two-point game and

01:03obviously South Carolina knew what they had to do. Down 10 early, listen, outscore

01:09them by four, right, lead at the break, and then 20-6 or 29 into the

01:14third quarter. Dawn Staley's team played as good a defense last night that they've

01:18played in a couple of months. Yeah, it was absolutely incredible stuff from the

01:22South Carolina team. The South Carolina team, though, is, if you will, somewhat

01:27responsible for the UConn surge in the market. These teams met late in the

01:34season at South Carolina. Gamecocks were a seven and a half point favorite, and

01:41they got rolled up in their building by 29 points with a great game out of AZ

01:48FUD. Fast forward to last night's game, and we saw UCLA rolled up after a great

01:56game by AZ FUD. Those 19 points all came in the first half, and it was over right

02:03then and there. 85-51, Coach UConn takes out the Bruins. What was your takeaway

02:09from this matchup? AZ FUD? I mean, AZ FUD, I mean, I don't know what other way to

02:14look at it. Listen, when you look at the box score and say that Paige Becker's got

02:19you, you know, and it was a slow start. It was 16 points. It was a slow start for

02:23Paige, right? And you say, wait, they went by 30? Like, it wasn't even a contest, and it

02:29was basically, Joe, what they figured out is, we're gonna play the Zacchini

02:32treatment. We're gonna let Lauren Betts get to her spot, score all the points.

02:37She had 26 points. The rest of the starters had 14. You can't beat a team like that.

02:45No, and you'd knock out a number one seed by, what, 24 points? 34 points? I mean,

02:49dominant effort, right? Number two seed in terms of the tournament. I mean, it

02:54wasn't even close. You talk about FUD, 7 of 12 from the field. She shoots 3 of 5

02:59from 3, just dominates, and that type of momentum really carries this team now

03:03into the national championship game on Sunday against South Carolina. What I'm

03:07intrigued about, Kev, is when you look at both of these teams, and to your point

03:12that they got blown out in the regular season matchup, from the coaches'

03:16perspective, coach, what do you do differently? Because obviously you don't

03:21want to utilize the same game plan, right? You might have had a bad day or a bad

03:25night shooting the basketball on defensively. Maybe you just weren't up to

03:29par, but to get blown out from a psychological perspective, that plays

03:34into players' minds, right? You have to start fast, but do you, as a coach, do you

03:38change it up in any capacity or show a different look early to see if you can

03:43gain some momentum in terms of the championship? What's interesting about

03:47this game is this game took place in February, which is great about the

03:50women's game is they play each other all season long. So when you look at that

03:5487-58 game, yeah, it was AZ-Funt, but it was a propensity to allow a team to shoot

04:00nearly 50% from three. If you are Dawn Staley, Raven Johnson, Tessa Johnson,

04:06Malaysia Fawali, you have to defend the three-point line, and you got to make

04:11sure you run AZ-Funt off the line. You got to run Kaitlyn Chen off the line,

04:16and here's the crazy stat about that game. They won 87-58, and Paige Becker

04:22shot three of 12 from the floor.

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