Blanca Quiñonez making an early impression at UConn

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Blanca Quiñonez making an early impression at UConn

Over the last few years, UConn has found fertile recruiting grounds overseas. The Huskies established a pipeline with Anna Makurat (Poland) in 2019, then continued with Nika Mühl (Croatia) in 2020, Inês Bettencourt (Portugal) in 2022 and Jana El Alfy (Egypt) in 2023 — all of whom came in as freshmen — as well as transfers Dorka Juhász (Hungary) and Lou Lopez Sénéchal (France).

UConn hopes freshman Blanca Quiñonez will be the latest hit in that lineage. Although a native of Ecuador — making her the program’s first player from South America — she’s spent the last five years with Magnolia Basket Campobasso in Italy’s Serie A1 league.

Quiñonez missed out on the team’s summer workouts while finishing up school back in Italy but once she arrived on campus in August, her extensive experience in a professional environment and league was evident right away.

“She looks really good,” Azzi Fudd said. “You can tell she's been playing with some pros.”

Whereas recruits in the United States and Canada play high school and AAU ball, which is generally organized by age, European prospects typically come up through club systems that expose them to older players and better competition. The latter setup helps make them natural fits for UConn’s program.

“There's a lot of similarities in all the European players,” Geno Auriemma said. “They have pretty good fundamentals. Their footwork is usually pretty good. Their work ethic is usually pretty good. They're used to playing against much older players over there. School usually is absolutely nothing to worry about with them.”

Even with that, Quiñonez is one of the top prospects that the Huskies have brought in from the other side of the pond. As an international player, she isn’t listed on any recruiting rankings since she played overseas but ESPN’s Shane Laflin wrote that she “would safely be a top 25 player in America.”

Listed at 6-2, Quiñonez has long arms and a strong frame. She doesn’t quite fit into a position and instead has been working with UConn’s “hybrids” — players that can be deployed in either the frontcourt or backcourt — alongside Sarah Strong and Caroline Ducharme. Quiñonez has plenty of skill, too — even if she’s still figuring out how to use it all.

“She's fun to watch because she's unpredictable,” Auriemma said. “She has a lot of skills and can do a lot of things, and sometimes she tries to do them all at the same time. But she's fun to watch. She does some things every day that really only somebody that's played against really experienced players knows.”

Off the court, Quiñonez has adjusted well to her new surroundings. Although she has already moved to another continent to pursue her basketball career once, that doesn’t make it any easier.

“She's been away from home for so long,“ Auriemma. “Home being Ecuador but then her other home is Italy.”

Her new teammates have helped her settle in. They’ve been working to get Quiñonez out of her shell, though it can be tough at times with somewhat of a language barrier. She speaks English — and is improving, by all accounts — but still has some room to grow. Even still, Quiñonez has still found a way to endear herself to the rest of the team.

“Sometimes she doesn't know what we're saying so she'll just laugh — which is just something I would do as well,” KK Arnold said with a chuckle.

It’s not as if Quiñonez is totally lost, though.

“She has a great personality,” Azzi Fudd added. “She just has some comments and stuff, it's funnier because you don't expect her to say some of the things. Her English has gotten a lot better but it's like, ‘How do you know that? How do you know that slang? How do you know how to use that?’

The freshman might be the most intriguing player on UConn’s roster. Expectations should be kept in check given it’ll be her first season of college basketball but her pro-level experience means she should be further along in her development than a typical freshman.

Exactly how that combination translates onto the court remains to be seen, though. The exhibition against Boston College on Oct. 13 will be the first chance to see Quiñonez in action — at least for those of us on the outside.

For people inside the program, she’s already made a good first impression.

“She acts like a freshman but also carries herself very maturely,” Ashlyn Shade said.

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