UConn's 2023-24 season by the numbers

The Huskies had one major record broken this past year, while a few other players moved up the leaderboards.

Author

Daniel Connolly
May 09, 2024

Photo: Ian Bethune

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  • Mir McLean transferred from Virginia to Maryland, which means the Terrapins will have three former Huskies next season: McLean, Amari DeBerry, and Saylor Poffenbarger.

UConn's 2023-24 season by the numbers

Before the focus fully turns to next season, let’s close the book on UConn’s 2023-24 campaign by looking at the numbers that defined the year.

Team stats

Auriemma’s march to history

In February, Geno Auriemma became the third coach in Division I basketball history — men’s or women’s — to reach 1,200 wins, joining Tara VanDerveer and Mike Krzyzewski. He finished the season with 1,213 career victories.

With VanDerveer retiring this offseason, Auriemma needs just four wins in 2024-25 to become the all-time leader.

The losses

UConn finished with a 32-6 record, its third consecutive season with six losses. The last time the Huskies had 6+ losses in three straight years? 1987-1990, the third, fourth, and fifth seasons of Auriemma’s tenure.

The 18 losses are also UConn’s most in a three-year span since 1991-’94 when it lost a combined 25 games.

The rebounds

UConn reeled in just 38.2 rebounds per game, its lowest average in the Her Hoop Stats Era (2009-present). Most of that deficiency came on the offensive end, where the Huskies’ 10.0 offensive boards per game were 0.9 fewer than the previous low. In terms of defensive rebounds, UConn grabbed 28.2 per game, better than three other seasons since 2009.

Other not-so-great records

In addition to rebounds, UConn’s 3.9 blocks per game and 14.6 fouls per game were also its worst marks during the Her Hoop Stats Era. Paige Bueckers’ 53 blocks led the team and finished with 17 more than Aaliyah Edwards in second place. Those two combined for 58.9 percent of the Huskies’ total rejections.

As for the fouls, KK Arnold was the biggest culprit with 96 to her name, though Edwards (95) and Nika Mühl (89) weren’t far behind. Ice Brady’s 5.9 foul percentage led the way among the members of the rotation, though. Surprisingly, Mühl’s foul percentage of 3.5 was fourth-best on the team.

The injuries

When the season ended, UConn had six players out for the season: Azzi Fudd (ACL), Caroline Ducharme (head/neck), Jana El Alfy (achilles), Ayanna Patterson (knee), Aubrey Griffin (ACL), and Amari DeBerry (concussion).

While it’s impossible to project how much production the Huskies lost since El Alfy hasn’t played college basketball yet and Patterson’s freshman campaign was marred by knee issues, we know they would’ve played in every game (or close to it) if healthy.

With that, we can estimate UConn dealt with a staggering 177 player-games lost to injury this past season. For reference, the Huskies totaled 121 player-games lost to injury in 2022-23 and just 82 in 2021-22.

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Player stats

Assists: Nika Mühl

The biggest statistical storyline of this past season was Mühl’s climb up the all-time assists list and her eventual takeover of the top spot in the win over Syracuse in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. She finished her career with 686 helpers — 27 more than Moriah Jefferson in second place.

On the season, Mühl had 253 assists — 31 short of her single-season record but 22 more than Sue Bird in second place. She’s the only player in program history to record 200+ assists in multiple seasons.

Mühl departed UConn as the single-game (15), single-season (284) and career (686) assists leader.

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Points: Paige Bueckers

With 854 points on the season, Bueckers joined Maya Moore (2010-11) as the only UConn player to reach 800 points in a single season. Bueckers finished just 14 points behind Moore’s mark.

She also averaged 21.9 points per game, the third-most in program history after Moore’s 2010-11 campaign (22.8) and Kerry Bascom’s 1988-89 season (22.6). Those three are the only ones to put up more than 21 points per game.

Bueckers is now up to a career average of 19.8 points per game — currently the top mark ever at UConn. She has a slight edge on Moore, who managed 19.7 points per game during her four years in Storrs.

With 1,683 points in her career, Bueckers is 19th on the all-time scoring list. While Covid and injuries have robbed her of the chance to catch Moore atop the leaderboard — Bueckers would need 1,353 points next season to do so — she has a good chance to vault into the top five, where she’s only 660 points away.

Rebounds: Aaliyah Edwards

In the Sweet Sixteen, Edwards became the ninth player in program history to record 1,000 career rebounds. She eventually finished with 1,020 — eighth-most all-time.

Edwards got there with remarkable consistency. She had 164 as a freshman, 183 as a sophomore, 332 as a junior and finally 341 as a senior. The latter ranks ninth in UConn’s single-season record books.

In the same vein, Edwards closed her career with 35 career double-doubles — good for sixth-most in program history — in large part thanks to 18 double-doubles as a senior — third-most in a single-season in Storrs.

The freshmen

Arnold made an immediate impact on the defensive end, racking up a team-high 90 steals. That total is good for second-most by a UConn freshman behind only Nykesha Sales (102). Svetlana Abrosimova also had 90 steals in her first season in Storrs.

Down the other end of the court, Arnold’s 123 assists were tied with Pam Webber and Renee Montgomery for the second-most by a freshman. The top spot is held by Bueckers, who had 168 helpers during the Covid shortened 2020-21 campaign.

As for Ashlynn Shade, her 419 points were tenth-most by a freshman — which bumped Rebecca Lobo out of the top ten.

Best of social media

May 14 will be Aaliyah Edwards Day in her hometown of Kingston, Ontario:

Huskies forever:

Paige Bueckers, Aaliyah Edwards, and Azzi Fudd all walked at graduation over the weekend:

… where Maya Moore gave the commencement speech:

Crystal Dangerfield got traded to Renee Montgomery’s Atlanta Dream:

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