Kaitlyn Chen setting the tone for UConn

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Headlines

News

• UConn women’s basketball opens at No. 2 in AP Preseason Poll

Analysis

• Chasing Perfection: Starting a new season

• The plan for Sarah Strong? ‘Impact winning’

Last week’s Weekly

• UConn begins new season with more flexibility, but less experience

Elsewhere

• Shea Ralph receives contract extension from Vanderbilt

Kaitlyn Chen setting the tone for UConn

While Kaitlyn Chen only arrived at UConn this summer as a transfer from Princeton, she has something that’s in short supply across the roster: Collegiate experience. With 90 career games under her belt, she’s seen more action at the Division I level than every other Husky with the exception of sixth-year forward Aubrey Griffin.

All of that came at one of the pre-eminent mid-major programs led by a former UConn player in Carla Berube, too. The jump isn’t nearly as large as what Lou Lopez Sénéchal faced when she transferred from Fairfield a couple years ago.

“She comes from from a winning program where they challenge themselves against the better teams in the country,” Geno Auriemma said. “They didn't back down from anybody… The fact that she's played four years of basketball, obviously it shows.”

With that track record, Chen has been thrust into a leadership role with the Huskies. While that may not come naturally to her — she’s been shy and quiet in her first couple interactions with the media — UConn doesn’t need her to be the leading voice out on the floor. That’s Paige Bueckers job.

After all, Chen is still figuring everything out herself. She’s learning a new offense while fitting in with a new set of teammates all the while getting acclimated to the higher level of play. That process takes time.

Instead, Chen is leading through her actions on the court.

“Her adjustment is okay because she aggressive, she plays hard, she attacks with the ball,” Auriemma said. “So just by nature of her personality, the transition will be — not easy — but easier than if she was passive.”

“What I liked about Kaitlyn is she's at practice every day. She's an incredibly hard worker. She's incredibly aggressive. She's smart. She picks things up very quickly,” he added later.

While Chen herself might still be uncertain about herself as a leader — “It's a work in progress,” she admitted when asked about it — her teammates see it differently.

“She's really quick to keep people accountable,” Sarah Strong said. “I feel like she pushes people and she expects a lot of them — kind of like Paige.”

UConn didn’t add Chen just to be a veteran presence, though. During her three years at Princeton, she built an impressive resume that included the 2023 Ivy League Player of the Year award, two First Team All-Ivy selections and a WBCA Honorable Mention All-American nod in 2024. As a senior, she averaged 15.8 points on 48.8 percent shooting while racking up 4.9 assists and 1.3 steals.

Chen has the talent to be an impact addition during her lone season with the Huskies.

“She has all the qualities that if she had been here since freshman year, we would be talking about her as an All-American and a really high draft pick,” Auriemma said. “There were so many things to like about her.”

While the transition from Princeton to UConn is still ongoing for Chen, that’s to be expected.

“I think that what she's doing on the court since she got here in June with some of our practice players that she competes against, that's different for her. They didn't necessarily do that at Princeton,” Auriemma said. “It's taken some time to get adjusted to the physicality and the quickness and the speed of the game.”

“She's still finding herself in that, finding her footing, but she's doing a great job,” Bueckers corroborated.

Still, that step up is part of what attracted Chen to Storrs. While the Tigers had plenty of success during her tenure — three-peating the Ivy League regular season and tournament titles while reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 2023 — the Huskies are a completely different animal.

They’re ranked as the No. 2 team in the country with national championship aspirations and a roster that oozes talent. As good as Chen was at Princeton, she came to UConn to take her game to the next level.

“I think just being surrounded by so many great players, I feel like it's a place that I could definitely see myself growing and becoming a better player and learning a lot from,” she said. “I'm just hoping that I will be able to step up and perform and hopefully help this team win another championship.”

While the Huskies brought Chen in to replace Nika Mühl as the third ball-handler on the roster, they don’t want her to be an exact replica of the Croatian point guard.

“We want her to be Kaitlyn,” Bueckers said. “We didn't want her to come here to be anybody else.”

It helps that Chen is pretty much the polar opposite of Mühl. She’s an offensive-minded player who is a scorer first and a passer if that doesn’t work.

“Definitely looking to score, and then hopefully drawing in people and opening up other opportunities for others,” she said about her game.

Since Chen only has one year at UConn, there’s only so much for development. Instead, Auriemma is simply embracing who she is as a player — which means accepting all the good (and bad) that comes with that.

“We're trying to just play to her strengths, more than anything… There's a lot of things that she did that I'm sure drove Carla nuts, too. I can see what they are already,” Auriemma said. “But I don't have her for four years. I'm renting her.”

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