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UConn women’s basketball loss to Baylor puts team, seniors in an unusual position
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The top-ranked Huskies’ 126-game regular-season winning streak that stretched over five seasons ended with a 68-57 loss at No. 8 Baylor on Thursday night.
“It’s different. Clearly it’s nowhere near the emotions as the past two years when we lost in the Final Four,” Samuelson said. “I think it’s more anger this year, feeling like you could have done things to help the team.”
The Huskies had an undefeated national championship when Samuelson and Collier were freshmen in 2015-16. UConn went to the Final Four without a loss each of the past two seasons before two-point overtime losses in consecutive national semifinal games.
UConn (11-1) hadn’t lost a regular-season game in regulation since a 76-70 home loss to Baylor in a Nos. 1 vs. 2 matchup on Feb. 18, 2013 — a span of 163 games. Their only regular-season loss since then was 88-86 in overtime at Stanford on Nov. 14, 2014.
In his 34th season, Auriemma said: “How long did you think you were going to win every game in the regular season, 10 years?”
“Stanford in 2014. Think about that,” he said.
The loss at Baylor was the fifth road game in a six-game stretch for UConn that started with an 89-71 win at then-No. 1 Notre Dame. But the Huskies hadn’t played since a tough win Dec. 22 at then-No. 14 Cal, three days after trailing by double digits in the second half at Oklahoma, before pulling out a 72-63 win.
“I think people sometimes get this impression that UConn, we have this magic dust and our kids are all perfect players and all great students, they all shoot the ball great and every time we shoot it, it goes in and it’s just a matter of how much we’re going to win by,” Auriemma said. “And it’s taken for granted I think. … You’re allowed to get beat once in a while.”
In their last game before starting American Athletic Conference play Sunday at Houston, the 11-time national champion Huskies shot only 29 percent (20 of 68) with their lowest point total this season. It was their first double-digit loss since 72-59 to Notre Dame in the final 2011-12 regular-season game.
Samuelson and Collier both had double-doubles against Baylor, but were a combined 10-of-34 shooting with 11 rebounds each. Collier was 6-of-18 shooting for 16 points while Samuelson, after missing her first six shots, finished 4 of 16 with 12 points.
“Knowing we have a game on Sunday, it’s a situation we’ve never been in before.” Samuelson said. “We’re learning from it, just like we’re going to learn from what we did on the court, how to react in this situation.”
After the Huskies lost at Stanford in the second game of the 2014-15 season, they won 37 in a row for a national championship. The last time UConn had consecutive losses was in 1993 — a span of 937 games going into the Houston game.
“Just getting our minds right and seeing what we did, and we have to be able to learn from it and move on,” Collier said. “We do have more games to play this season, so we have to be able to focus on what the next thing’s going to be.”
Kalani Brown had 20 points and 17 rebounds for the Lady Bears (10-1), whose only loss was 68-63 at then-No. 11 Stanford on Dec. 15. They had played only one game since, a 61-point win on New Year’s Eve against Texas-Rio Grande Valley.
“Connecticut gets everybody’s best shot. They don’t lose much, we don’t lose much,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “When you can do it year after year after year, taking people’s best shots and you have a shot to play each other, it’s good for women’s basketball.”
One of the UConn women’s basketball team’s many streaks was snapped Thursday night when the Huskies suffered their first regular-season loss since 2014.
In their first test of 2019, the top-ranked Huskies fell to No. 8 Baylor in Waco, Texas, 68-57. UConn was plagued with shooting trouble early in the game, never fully recovering against a strong defensive effort from Baylor UConn was led by senior Napheesa Collier with 16 points and 10 rebounds and Katie Lou Samuelson (12 points, 11 rebounds). Crystal Dangerfield scored 11 points, while Megan Walker had 10 and Christyn Williams ended the night with eight. They shot 29 percent from the field, scoring only 10 points in the paint.
The Huskies got off to a slow start, struggling against Baylor’s size advantage. They shot just 23.5 percent in the first quarter, while the Bears shot 43.8 percent. The only UConn players who scored in the first quarter — aside from free throws — were Dangerfield, Collier and Walker. With a few uncontested shots, Baylor quickly took the lead and finished the first quarter up 16-13.
Baylor extended its lead in the second quarter, going up by as much as nine points before the Huskies started to rally back in the final three minutes of the half. Collier gave the Huskies their momentum, knocking down a 3-pointer followed immediately by a steal on the other end of the court. One made free throw later, Collier had UConn trailing by just five points. Samuelson and Walker both hit threes, followed by a last second offensive rebound and putback from Samuelson sent the Huskies into halftime down 30-29.Just over a minute into the third quarter, Samuelson sank a three to tie it up at 32-32, but the momentum quickly went back to Baylor. The Bears went on a 9-2 run and the Ferrell Center exploded as they went into a timeout up 41-34.
But UConn has a habit of fighting back just when things seem to be trending too far in the wrong direction, and that’s exactly what it did. A few made shots and it felt like the Huskies were back in it, but turnovers and fouls helped Baylor pull away again. This time, UConn let Baylor get out to a 10-point lead before back-to-back threes from Williams silenced the Bears’ crowd as the quarter ended. Baylor led 51-47 at the end of the quarter.The fourth quarter began with a string of missed shots from behind the arc for UConn, once again putting them down by 10. The deficit would prove too much to overcome as they continued to struggle against Baylor’s defense.
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