The Aftermath: 'The Azzi Fudd breakout party' lifts UConn to victory

Last week, Azzi Fudd returned to game action for the first time since her tearing ACL. But against Ole Miss on Wednesday night, she declared that she was truly back with an 18-point performance that helped lift UConn to a 73-60 victory in the Baha Mar Women’s Championship.

“The Azzi Fudd breakout party,” as Paige Bueckers called it postgame on the radio broadcast.

Fudd didn’t just put up a big point total, she came up clutch in crucial moments. After the Huskies took a 19-point lead into halftime, the Rebels roared back with a 15-0 run to pull within three in the third quarter.

UConn’s usual suspects were struggling, too. Bueckers turned the ball over three times in the period while Sarah Strong get anything going on either end of the floor.

Not Fudd. She drilled a 3-pointer to end the run and followed it up with another bucket that pushed the lead back to eight to give the Huskies some breathing room. After Ole Miss responded with back-to-back baskets, Fudd answered with a jumper.

Then just 11 seconds into the fourth quarter, she scored an old-fashioned 3-point play that put UConn up by nine and effectively ended the comeback bid.

“We needed every single little thing that she did,” Geno Auriemma said. “I’m just so proud of her.”

While Fudd is best known as a sharpshoot from the outside, she did most of her damage from anywhere but with just one of her eight baskets coming from behind the arc. Fudd’s struggled to find her 3-point shot since returning — she entered Wednesday’s game 1-8 from deep — so she went elsewhere for points.

Fudd put the ball on the floor to create chances in the mid-range. She cut for backdoor layups and attacked the rim.

“My shot hasn’t been falling so I was just looking for little things. Looking for layups, backdoors, anything I could get,” she said. “Just controlling what I can control and just trying to see the ball go in with the layups, easy jump shots, those little things. My teammates got me open, found me.”

Through UConn’s first five games, Bueckers and Strong have done the heavy lifting by combining for 36.0 of the team’s 79.4 points. Nobody had established themselves as a consistent third option — there had been just six 10+ point performances from the rest of the roster prior to Wednesday night.

The Huskies hope that Fudd’s performance against Ole Miss is a preview of what’s still to come.

“We have three players that in games like this, every night we need to rely on them,” Auriemma said. “Then everybody else does their part.”

Winning plays

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