an OK article that starts off with total BS!
why must connolly conjure up a hokey, totally misleading thesis that "the Huskies were a team in name only. On the court, it was essentially Bueckers and four other onlookers" at the start of the season. It makes for a neato narrative, a nice structure to build his story around ... the problem, though, is it wasn't anywhere near true. It's the sort of crap that does a disservice to the real journalism.
yeah, paige was the star of the TEAM. Of course she would be -- winner of multiple national player of the year awards the year before. The team would have been dysfunctional , seriously flawed, if it didn't take advantage of this.
i think everyone was aware of the danger connolly declared was true ... that other players would sit back and "let paige do it." No damning evidence, though. just a fear. ... Yet connolly fixes the history to make his story neater. No other reason.
it fact, back in nov. & dec., the team was in flux. There were 14 players -- four of them entirely new and one with only a couple of months experience with the team as an early admission freshman. We don't know what the chemistry was then (2 players soon transferred). The seniors didn't appear to be great on-court leaders; paige would be a likely candidate to fill the need. Although we didn't know it then, dorka, nika, azzi and aubrey (maybe others too -- evina?) weren't in good physical shape. These and other factors could have made the team at the time even more reliant on paige to steer the ship. But connolly would rather establish the narrative that uconn was 'a team in name only' content to ride paige's coattails to glory.
if i were connected to the program -- a player, a parent, coach or auxiliary -- i'd be a bit po'd by this gratuitous, sloppy 'historical' aside. Neat as it is as a story.