Nice article. A couple of quotes really stood out to me:
Fudd admits during the beginning of the season, she wasn’t sure how the chemistry would pan out with so many newcomers and various players also returning from injury, like herself. “I feel like a week before the season started, things were still kind of rocky,” Fudd said. “And I'm not gonna lie, there's a time where I was like, ‘Oh, this is not looking too great.’ And just to see how far we've come, in literally a month, has been insane. Like, from the first game to now, I feel like we've gone miles.”
and this from Geno:
“We spend a lot of time on ‘Where do you need to be, when the ball is where?’ So that we know where you are, and all we have to do is catch it and move it to the next spot,” Auriemma said. “We never have to worry about whether you're going to be there or not. And we're fortunate enough to have unselfish players who like to play that way, and that's the way we've always coached at Connecticut, and we happen to have a team that enjoys playing that way.”
That second one is really descriptive of what we've been seeing. Deb Antonelli commented on it a few times during the tournament, that UConn was moving the ball really well all around the court without any dribbles. "The ball never touches the floor," she said at one point. This is the hallmark of Geno's coaching, for me. Quick ball movement forces opponents to scramble on the perimeter and end up leaving a shooter open or creating a paint opportunity. The stretch from 2013 through 2019 the teams were really good at this. It's been great to see it again.
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