NASSAU, Bahamas — The top 20 matchup between No. 2 UConn women’s basketball and No. 18 Ole Miss was played in front of just over 1,500 fans in a convention center ballroom at the Baha Mar Women’s Championship, but the atmosphere of the game was anything but casual.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma and Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin both paced their respective sidelines, never sitting down for a moment in the tournament final on Wednesday. Superstar Paige Bueckers hit a deep three-pointer in the fourth quarter that gave the Huskies their biggest lead since halftime, and the point guard was so locked in that she didn’t celebrate the bucket for a single second, face completely neutral as she turned on her heel to recover defensively.
The crowd was small but boisterous: McPhee-McCuin, a Freeport, Bahamas, native, drew a large cheering section equipped with noise makers and pompoms, while Azzi Fudd’s father, Tim, led chants for the squad of UConn faithful.
In a game of nonstop runs, the Huskies put together a textbook defensive performance in the first half to take a 37-18 lead, but the Rebels battled back with their own disruptive effort in the third quarter. Ole Miss forced a season-high 18 turnovers against UConn and went on a 20-4 run over the opening minutes of the second half to cut the Huskies’ lead to as little as three points before UConn pulled away again in the fourth to win, 73-60.
“These are the kind of games you get in March, for sure,” Auriemma said. “I think that’s why you put yourself in these situations, because you want to be able to refer back to them and use them as learning experiences. It’s not that if you lose a game like this signals anything. I don’t think Ole Miss is going to go back home and go, ‘Oh my God, there goes our chance of winning a national championship.’ But I think it just gives you an opportunity to identify, this is what it’s going to be like.
“That was one of the big questions that I wanted to see answered: Are we able to handle the size and the physicality? … I was pleasantly surprised by by how we handled it for the most part.”
Ole Miss brought one of the most experienced teams in the tournament into the championship game, starting four fifth-year players who all scored in double digits against the Huskies. UConn’s starting lineup included first-year Princeton transfer Kaitlyn Chen, true freshman Sarah Strong, and redshirt sophomore Ice Brady, who entered the game with a combined 17 starts in their UConn careers.
“We talked about it at halftime, that there was going to be a marked difference in their approach and how they were going to attack us, and we lost a little bit of our composure. We lost a little bit of our defensive toughness, our defensive intensity,” Auriemma said. “As much as you hate to see it happen, it gave us an opportunity to regroup and play that fourth quarter and take control of the game again, but I’m not surprised at all with how that third quarter played out from their end. I was little bit surprised on our end, but that’s why we came down here. We have five players that never played at UConn, so it’s a learning experience for everybody. We learned a lot.”
McPhee-McCuin was heated after the loss, pointing out Ole Miss’s victories in the turnover battle, on the offensive boards, and from 3-point range. But UConn found answer after answer to the Rebels’ punches: They outscored Ole Miss 48-18 in the paint, shooting 19-for-25 on layups, and their stars shined in the biggest moments.
Bueckers, despite facing a brutal one-on-one matchup with Rebels star Kennedy Todd-Williams for most of the game, finished with 29 points shooting 11-for-17 from the field. Fudd had her highest-scoring performance in two years in her third game back from an ACL tear suffered last season with 18 points shooting 8-for-11. Strong got into foul trouble that limited her in the second half, but she finished with 10 points and six rebounds to combine with Fudd and Bueckers for 78% of UConn’s total scoring.
The imperfect win was in some ways a perfect scenario for the Huskies, who are headed into a gauntlet of ranked opponents in December after they return home. After a matchup with Holy Cross at Gampel Pavilion on Tuesday, UConn will face No. 24 Louisville, No. 3 Notre Dame, No. 15 Iowa State and No. 6 USC over a 10-day period with every game except USC at a neutral or road site. Thought the slate will be a major challenge, Auriemma knows it’s the kind of preparation his team will need with championship aspirations in 2025, especially because the Huskies are currently the only Big East team ranked in either the AP Top 25 or USA TODAY coaches’ poll.
“I think Coach said it best after the game, that all of these games here, right now and coming up, are our tests and March is like our final exam,” Fudd said. “Getting to play a really great Ole Miss team tonight was a test for us, a challenge for sure, and the way they played, we haven’t seen a team like that with the pressure, the great defense. Just the all around team that they have, we haven’t seen that yet this year, so I think that was a great little test for us. I think we did really well, but the season is only going to get tougher. Teams are only going to improve, so we just want to keep the momentum going.”
