UConn's small-ball lineup providing a much-needed spark

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Headlines

News

• Ayanna Patterson likely to miss remainder of season

• Notebook: UConn to play UNC in Greensboro next year; Edwards non-committal about draft decision; Azzi Fudd update

• Chasing Perfection: UConn shows tangible progress vs. UNC

• Tiffany Hayes announces retirement from WNBA

Game coverage

• Paige Bueckers is just getting started

• No. 17 UConn women’s basketball sinks No. 24 North Carolina, 76-64

• How defense and joy sparked Paige Bueckers to her best game of the season

• Photo gallery: North Carolina vs. UConn

Last week’s Weekly:

• UConn's win over Ball State turns into celebration of Nika Mühl

Other news

• UConn swept the Big East weekly awards with Paige Bueckers taking home player of the week and Ashlynn Shade earning freshman of the week.

UConn's small-ball lineup is providing a much-needed spark

When UConn traveled to Texas a week and a half ago, Geno Auriemma tried something new with his starting lineup: He went big. The Huskies opened the game with Aaliyah Edwards, Ice Brady, and Aubrey Griffin all on the floor together alongside Paige Bueckers and Nika Mühl to try and counteract the Longhorns’ size.

The results were disastrous. UConn allowed Texas to make its first six shots and fell behind 15-2 less than three minutes in. The Huskies trailed the entire game en route to an 80-68 defeat.

“Against Texas, we went against everything that I believe in and we went with a big lineup to try to match their size. It was just a lousy decision by me to do that,” Auriemma later admitted. “It didn't work anyway.”

Since then, UConn has gone in the other direction and leaned into its strength by playing small ball more frequently. Griffin and Brady were replaced in the starting lineup by KK Arnold and Ashlynn Shade, leaving Edwards as the only frontcourt player among the five.

The change has proven fruitful. After struggling with slow starts earlier in the year, the Huskies have outscored opponents by a combined 56-31 margin in the first quarter over their last two games. Against Ball State, they put up 37 points in the opening 10 minutes — most of any quarter this season.

“You might as well do what your strength is and if your strength isn't your big guys and your strength is your guards, then get as many of them out there as you can for as often as you can,” Auriemma said after the win over the Cardinals.

Small-ball has its caveats, though. UConn — a team that already struggles on the glass — has to sacrifice its rebounding ability to play with four guards. That showed on Sunday vs. UNC: The Huskies had 10 fewer boards and gave up 19 offensive rebounds which led to 16 second-chance points.

UConn knows that’s a problem that can’t be fixed overnight, if at all. Instead, Auriemma looks at how the lineup’s strength can undermine its weaknesses.

“We have to win the math battle, right? So they're probably going to get more rebounds than we are. We have to force more turnovers,” he explained. “We scored 15 more points from the 3-point line than they did and three more from the free throw line. That's an 18-point differential between how many free throws we made and how many threes we made. So if we can win that battle on a regular basis, I think we can stay with that small lineup.”

The small lineup isn’t a magic bullet that will solve all the Huskies’ issues, though. They’ll continue to play multiple bigs at once, they just won’t have three on the floor at the same time unless some eligibility rules change.

“That's not to say we can't play with two big guys,” Auriemma said after Ball State. “We just can't play with three and that's just evident — unless those three are Rebecca (Lobo), Kara (Wolters), and Jamelle (Elliott). Then that's easy. But they’re not.”

Instead, small-ball is just a piece in the puzzle of UConn’s season. The Huskies had to start over after Azzi Fudd and Caroline Ducharme went down, so they’re still figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Over the last three games, the team has slowly started to figure that out, even if the results haven’t all been positive.

It’s not the way Auriemma prefers to play — he likes having two bigs to go with three guards — but UConn’s options are limited with all the injuries. For the rest of the season, the Huskies have to figure out what works best with this group, and at the moment, that means playing small.

“We gotta mix and match and find our way,” Auriemma said.

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