UConn Extends Winning Streak to 77, But It Hasn't Been Easy

A casual read on the 2016-17 season schedule pointed to trouble for the Connecticut women's basketball winning streak, which had been 75 wins after the Huskies captured their fourth straight national championship last April.

UConn lost its top three players in Breanna Stewart, Moriah Jefferson, and Morgan Tuck, who were the first three picks in the 2016 WNBA Draft. A talented but inexperienced roster returned, and as coach Geno Auriemma put it last month, he'd prefer experience because "you can get by with less talent" if you have it. An early series of tests guaranteed that the Huskies would be challenged at their least-experienced, most vulnerable point.

But the demise of Connecticut as unstoppable force has been postponed indefinitely, following a 72-61 win over Baylor Thursday night at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs.

The win against the nation's second-ranked team, which followed Monday night's 78-76 victory at 12th-ranked Florida State, bore none of the hallmarks of the biggest victories during the Breanna Stewart Era. Last year's team suffocated opponents by forcing an average of 21 turnovers per game. It seldom made mistakes. It was the most efficient offensive force in the country as well. This Connecticut team lacks the true complete players, at least for now, but Auriemma has plenty of role players to make the whole package virtually unbeatable.

Thursday night, it was freshman Crystal Dangerfield, whose 30 minutes off the bench all but guaranteed that she'll be starting soon. She scored 19 points, dished out five assists, grabbed four rebounds and two steals, while commandeering the offense in the kind of self-assured way one expects an upperclassman to behave. A lone turnover loomed as the only blemish. An expected weakness of this team, someone to take over in the decisive moments, won't exist if this is what Dangerfield can do from day one.

Several times, she responded to a Baylor run by stepping behind the three-point line and sinking a momentum-killer shot. And there was an energy provided by her work that seemed to infuse the entire team. Dangerfield missed a three, but aggressively followed her miss, capturing the offensive rebound amid the biggest, strongest interior group in the country from Baylor, and kissed the follow off the glass and in. That combination of skill and will is as close to a microcosm of the Geno Auriemma Connecticut as you'll see in a five-second clip.

Prior to the season, he called out Dangerfield for taking plays off, but he had high praise for her after the win.

"I don't want to say she's as good as any point guard that we have ever had," Auriemma said. "That is saying too much too soon. But I think any other freshman in the country right now—she is as good a guard as there is in the country coming in."

It would be too much to ask Dangerfield to carry the Huskies all season by herself, but so far Auriemma hasn't. She scored just five points in the win over Florida State, but Napheesa Collier, a versatile wing, scored 28 to pace them. Kia Nurse hasn't reached double figures in either game yet, but her combo-one work is likely to yield some enormous scoring nights. Katie Lou Samuelson can get to the basket and drain threes, scored 16 Thursday night, and is capable of more.

Nor is the defense anything like a lost cause. Nurse is a stopper on the perimeter. Gabby Williams showed surprising strength against the bigger, taller Lady Bears. And Natalie Butler grabbed rebounds and blocked shots at a rate that will keep the classic post in the Huskies rotation this season.

The team is hardly finished being tested. In just the first week of December alone, UConn faces 20th ranked DePaul, eighth-ranked Texas, and top-ranked Notre Dame, while games against seventh-ranked Ohio State and sixth-ranked Maryland dot the schedule before December is even out. They may well lose, and perhaps even in the NCAA tournament, but they're still going to be a tough out.

"We can fight. We can push back," Williams said when the game was over. "I think we kind of showed the rest of the country, like OK, it's not going to be as easy as you think it is to beat UConn this year."