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How Blanca Quiñonez ended up at UConn
The now-freshman never planned to play college basketball until she finally discovered the NCAA Tournament. Now, the Huskies are set to reap the rewards.
Daniel Connolly
November 13, 2025
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Photo: Evan Rodriguez — Storrs Central
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How Blanca Quiñonez ended up at UConn
Blanca Quiñonez never planned on playing college basketball in the United States. When she first moved from Ecuador to Italy in 2020 to further her career with Magnolia Basket Campobasso, going the NCAA route wasn’t on her radar.
“Don’t ask me for a reason [why],” Quiñonez laughed. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want it.”
Then she discovered the NCAA Tournament. Quiñonez first followed the madness in 2024 and suddenly, her entire perspective changed. She didn’t just want to play college basketball — she felt like she needed to.
“If you want to arrive at the goals that you have, I think you need to have steps,” she explained. “I think that this is one of the biggest steps that can help me to get where I want to get.”
Even with that revelation, Quiñonez needed a way to get the attention of college coaches. Enter the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders. In July 2024, she traveled to Phoenix to participate in a showcase during WNBA All-Star Weekend, where she caught the eye of UConn’s staff for the first time. A few months later, the 6-2 forward from Milagros, Ecuador committed to the Huskies.
For Quiñonez, the choice was easy.
“Here's everything that you need to have to get better, to improve yourself and to learn,” she explained. “You have a lot of people who have different experience, you have one of the best coaches in the country. So I think that to have this [ability] to learn from each other is the best thing.”
A couple former UConn players helped sell Quiñonez on the school as well.
“I met Anna Makurat and (Dorka) Juhász, they were playing in Italy too,” she said. “I talked with them a couple times, they told me a lot of beautiful things, that it would be a good experience to get better in my game.”
While the decision was simple, the transition to life in Storrs hasn’t been as straightforward. Quiñonez has to acclimate to a new country with a new culture all while learning a new language. A native Spanish speaker, she already picked up Italian as a second language but now has to start the process all over again with English.
Quiñonez has made significant progress in a short time, though. During the preseason, she answered questions from the media in English for 12 minutes without any help and then handled a press conference after making her UConn debut on Wednesday night. She just has to get more comfortable with the language.
“I don't speak a lot because I need to get more confidence with English,” she said.
The food has also been a stark change compared to Italy.
“I'm from Ecuador, so I think we're really close for food. But from Italy, it’s so different,” Quiñonez said. “I ate pasta every day, so I miss that. But I think the kitchen is doing their best work to make me feel close to Italy, too. So it's not bad.”
In terms of basketball, college is less physical and more finesse-oriented compared to Europe. UConn also deploys a system that gives its players freedom to make plays instead of running offensive sets out of a playbook, which Quiñonez appreciates.
“I love it. That's why I'm here. I want to learn,” she said.
During the preseason, Quiñonez certainly tested the boundaries of her new freedom. In the two exhibitions, she shot 4-15 overall and 1-8 from three. The freshman didn’t get discouraged by the misses, either — she kept letting them fly, much to her head coach’s chagrin.
“She missed so many shots yesterday that I didn’t know which language to say, ‘Stop shooting.’ So I said it in English, I said it in Italian and I told her, flat out, ‘Stop shooting,’” Auriemma quipped on his last radio show. “She shot it the next three times she touched it. So we got an [Ecuadorian]-Italian Svetlana (Abrosimova) on my hands right now. Then she made the next three 3-pointers and kinda looked at me like, ‘Yeah, get ready for four more years of this.’”
Quiñonez sat out the first two regular season games with a left shoulder injury but finally returned in UConn’s win over Loyola Chicago on Wednesday night. Despite having just two practices under her belt, she finished with five points, three assists and two steals in 20 minutes of action.
“I'm hoping that we can just keep ramping up her minutes as we go along. I think she gives us a really good balance, either with Sarah (Strong) or when Sarah is not on the floor, to have a similar type of presence out there,” Auriemma said. “All in all, I think it was a good start for her.”
UConn is willing to be patient with Quiñonez, though. She has an impressive combination of size, athleticism and skill that can’t be taught. At times, Quiñonez plays like she’s not totally sure how to use all her abilities, so mistakes are inevitable — especially early. Still, her potential shines through every time she steps on the floor.
“She tries to do a lot of things. So in the beginning, that’s okay because she's out there trying to impact the game,” Auriemma said after the BC exhibition. “She'll throw some passes that no one else can throw. There were a couple of them today. Then she'll throw a couple passes that no one else should ever throw.”
Quiñonez has taken quite the journey to Storrs. While South America is a soccer-obsessed continent, she picked up basketball thanks to her mother, who used to play. Magnolia Basketball Campobasso offered her a spot after seeing her play with an Ecuadorian youth national team at just 13 years old. Despite still being a kid, Quiñonez accepted and moved halfway across the world to chase her dream.
“My mom and my dad didn’t want me to leave, but I think that was one of the best decisions for me and for my family,” she said.
While Quiñonez has been away from Ecuador for years now, she still takes great pride in her country. She’s now UConn’s first-ever player from South America — which she doesn’t take lightly.
“It means a lot because Ecuador is a small place and nobody hears about it. So I'm really excited because I have the possibility to represent not just [myself] but also my country. It’s a big thing. I'm really excited and really proud of me and all the people that were working with me to get here.”
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