The victim this time was Creighton, which found itself on the losing end of a 95-54 score.
Creighton’s women’s basketball team got a lesson from the best Sunday against No. 1 UConn.
The Bluejays, with an 11-member roster that consists of six freshmen, got a first-hand look at what makes the Huskies great as defending national champion UConn won 95-54 in Omaha, Neb.
Relentless. Hustle. And a heck of a defense.
UConn (16-0, 7-0 Big East) sputtered a bit coming out of the locker room, providing Creighton (7-9, 3-4) with some early hope. The Blue Jays have never defeated the Huskies, now with an 0-13 record against them.
At the 6:39 mark of the first quarter, a Serah Williams layup gave UConn a 10-4 lead, and a six-point run by Creighton pulled them even.
And the home team would get no closer.
UConn went on a 9-4 spurt before Kayleigh Heckel’s layup gave the Huskies a 21-14 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The Heckel basket launched a 19-0 Huskies run to give UConn a 38-14 advantage, which was followed by a 14-1 sequence later to limit Creighton to seven points in the second quarter and give the Huskies a dominating 54-21 halftime lead.
"I think teams in our league are pretty good at spreading the floor and trying to use up a lot of the shot clock, so we knew that our full-court pressure was going to be a big factor,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma told TNT Sports at halftime. “We changed up a little bit about how we were going to get into that pressure, and I thought our guys did a really good job of forcing turnovers. Once we did that, our half-court offense started to click.
“They are a very young team, Creighton, but they do a great job moving without the ball; they got us a couple of times on back-cuts. It took us a little bit of a minute, but we eventually caught up."
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Sarah Strong led UConn with a double-double – 18 points and 13 rebounds. Blanca Quinonez chipped in 15 points and four rebounds with Azzi Fudd contributing 14 points and five assists. Ashlynn Shade added 12 points.
One of those Creighton first-year players, Ava Zediker, sent a message to the rest of the Big East with her game. In 34 minutes, she scored 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting – 2 of 5 from long distance – and had three rebounds and two assists. Against mostly bench players for UConn, Zediker was 5-of-5 shooting in the fourth quarter and scored 14 points.
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