2 days Ago
SPOKANE, Wash. — It’s the Elite Eight matchup that college basketball fans anticipated on Selection Sunday, as No. 2 UConn (34-3) and No.
1 USC (31-3) will do battle in Spokane to determine who advances to the Final Four. The game will be a rematch of last season’s Elite Eight, in which the Huskies prevailed. USC did beat UConn in Hartford in December, so this game will serve as a rubber match.
ESPN will carry the broadcast from Spokane Arena on Monday at 9 p.m. EST.
While most people expected UConn and USC to face off in the Elite Eight, they were certainly looking forward to a duel between First Team All-Americans Paige Bueckers, of the Huskies, and JuJu Watkins, of the Trojans. RELATED: Paige Bueckers drops career-high 40, as UConn women run past Oklahoma in Sweet 16, 82-59 Those dreams were shattered last week when Watkins suffered a season-ending knee injury in the Round of 32. USC is now forced to play without its star, who averaged 23.
9 points per game. That development resulted in UConn being 13.5-point favorites entering Monday.
The Trojans are still a formidable opponent, led by rising head coach Lindsay Gottlieb. Senior forward Kiki Iriafen has also contributed 18.2 points and 8.
4 rebounds in 2024-2025. She scored only seven points in USC’s Sweet 16 win over No. 5 Kansas State and will look to bounce back against UConn’s guard-heavy lineup.
Freshman USC guard Kennedy Smith is coming off a fine performance in the Sweet 16, where she scored 19 points. The USC guards will have to deal with Bueckers, who scored a career-high 40 points in the Sweet 16 against Oklahoma. All in all, on Sunday, Auriemma said he is ready for what promises to be an entertaining game.
Sign up for the FOX61 newsletters: Morning Forecast, Morning Headlines, Evening Headlines “They can shoot the ball really, really well,” Auriemma said. “[Defending USC] is going to involve a lot of people and a lot of chess matches.” Auriemma touched on how different USC is this season compared to the team the Huskies eliminated from the NCAA Tournament last spring.
“I think they grew from the experience that they had last season and our game. I think they grew from that, and you could see it,” Auriemma said. “I think the pieces that they added, their young players, certainly change the makeup of the team, and that was really evident yesterday.
” During the press conference, Auriemma was asked about Watkins and her absence. He expressed it is devastating to see such a talented player go down and acknowledged UConn has dealt with similar situations in recent years. “We saw firsthand what it’s like to play without someone who means so much to your team.
We haven’t been immune to a lot of that stuff over the years,” Auriemma said. Auriemma added that, as a team advances deep into the NCAA Tournament, it usually relies on a player to step up and do the “heavy lifting.” For instance, he said Bueckers has done just that, scoring 34 and 40 points respectively in the past two games.
While USC is without its star, Auriemma believes the Trojans' roster is still quite capable. RELATED: Bueckers is brilliant! Paige leads UConn women to 91-57 March Madness victory over Jackrabbits “That normally would be someone like JuJu, but if you have enough good people around her, which they do, they will get a chance to stand out even more than they would have ordinarily, so that could compensate for it. Yeah, they’re a different team in a positive way and a different team in a negative way because of what happened,” Auriemma said.
Before stepping down from the podium, Auriemma praised sophomore guard Ashlynn Shade, who hit several important buckets as UConn struggled in the second quarter against Oklahoma. She finished the game with 12 points. Auriemma complimented Shade for letting him coach her hard and said he wished he had a roster filled with 12 players who shared her competitive mindset.
“I know she’s never going to back down. I know she’s never going to give in to anybody. She’s never going to stop competing, never going to stop trying to make a play,” Auriemma said.
“And it can go unnoticed, until that first half yesterday when you realize she’s the only one that’s able to get something going.” ---- Dalton Zbierski is a digital content producer and writer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dzbierski@FOX61.
com . ---- Do you have a story idea or something on your mind you want to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] .
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