Starting Five: Could the NCAA Tournament provide a spark for Jana El Alfy?

Growing up in Egypt, Jana El Alfy didn’t have much exposure to the NCAA Tournament. It’s not that she didn’t want to watch — she usually couldn’t.

“It wasn't easily accessible back home to watch the games in Egypt,” she explained. “It wasn't very known and accessible.”

But over the last two seasons, El Alfy had a front-row seat to the madness. She arrived at UConn as an early-enrollee and watched the team’s first Sweet Sixteen exit since 2005 from the bench while redshirting. Last year, El Alfy tore her achilles over the summer and missed the entire campaign, so she took in the Huskies’ Final Four run from the bench.

At long last, the redshirt freshman is getting a chance to actually play in the NCAA Tournament.

“I've been really looking forward to this moment. Finally being able to make it after two years of watching is such a blessing,” El Alfy said. “It’s super exciting. I've been looking for it for a long time.”

To this point, she’s had a quiet first year in Storrs, averaging just 5.5 points and 5.1 rebounds in 16.3 minutes per game. Despite UConn’s desperate need in the low post, El Alfy hasn’t been able to help much.

There’s one exception, though. When the Huskies traveled down to South Carolina in February, she put together the best game of her career. El Alfy set the tone with physical and aggressive play down low, then also crossed up a defender at the free throw line and drove in for a layup. She finished with eight points and six rebounds.

So what happened? El Alfy was hit with a wave of FOMO — fear of missing out — before the game.

“I just wanted to win really, really, really bad — not gonna lie. I blocked out everything. I just wanted to be out there,” she explained. “I thought about the moment where I was sitting the past few years, how I wasn't able to be in a game like that. Now I have the opportunity to be out there, I didn’t want to take it for granted. I just got in my head and I was like, ‘Remember last year when we were in the same position and you couldn’t even play?’ So then I walked into the game with that mindset and I didn’t take anything for granted. I just went out there to do my thing and not think about anything at all.”

If El Alfy can just flip a switch like that because of an insatiable desire to win one game in the regular season, then she should be capable of the same in the NCAA Tournament. That’s the theory, at least.

It didn’t manifest itself in the first round — she finished with five points on 1-4 shooting and six rebounds in 19 minutes — though UConn also won by 69. The victory didn’t exactly have the same intensity as South Carolina.

Yet as the Huskies continue to advance and the games get tougher, perhaps El Alfy re-finds that motivation from earlier. After all, she’s seen the Huskies come up short twice already. Now, she’ll have a say in the final outcome.

El Alfy’s head is in the right place. UConn will have to hope that translates on the court.

“It's real time now. It's either you win or you get kicked out,” she said. “So there's no messing around. It's real now and there's no space for mistakes.”

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