What UConn needs to improve over its final five regular season games

After clobbering Creighton on Wednesday night, UConn has just five games left in the regular season. At this point in the calendar, the Huskies have no remaining secrets, though they are still far from a finished product.

“This is game number 26 for us and after 26 games, you start to realize, ‘This is who we are as a team,’” Geno Auriemma said postgame. “There's things that I can fix, there's things that can't be fixed. So my job between now and the end of the season is to try to fix the things that I can and try to hide the things I can't fix, and hope they don't cause us to lose because there are some things I can't fix.”

While the coach declined to reveal his team’s fatal flaws, he did highlight three areas to improve over the next two and a half weeks: Offensive rebounding, limiting “silly” fouls and the half-court offense.

Offensive rebounding

UConn currently leads the country in field goal percentage (53.2), 2-point percentage (60.4), 3-point percentage (40.3) and effective field goal percentage (60.4). That alone certainly isn’t a problem, though it has created an unintended side effect: The Huskies expect every shot they take to go in.

While confidence is important, it also means that UConn does not feel compelled to crash the offensive glass.

“In the first half, I went in the locker room and I said that we didn't even attempt to get an offensive rebound,” Auriemma said. “We shoot the ball and everybody jogs back on defense.”

That bears out in the numbers. The Huskies grab just 11.0 offensive rebounds per game, which ranks 230th out of 363 teams in the country. That’s their fourth-lowest mark since 2009-10, only ahead of the three previous seasons. UConn’s offensive rebounding rate — the percentage of its own misses that it recovers — is better at 34.4 percent and 107th nationally, but still not great.

According to Auriemma, this isn’t a product of personnel, but effort.

“You don't need any talent to be an offensive rebounder. All you need is, when the ball leaves somebody's hand, you automatically are putting yourself in a position to chase it down,” Auriemma said.

That’s apparent when looking at UConn’s top individual offensive rebounders. Jana El Alfy leads the team at 2.0 per game despite averaging just 11.4 minutes. Serah Williams is right behind her at 1.9 while Sarah Strong comes in with 1.3. But tied for third place is Ashlynn Shade, a 5-10 guard.

On Wednesday, UConn put in its worst offensive rebounding effort of the season against Creighton, grabbing just three in the win. That’s tied for the program’s lowest single-game total in the Her Hoop Stats era (2009-present).

The Huskies can only go up from there.

“We make so many shots that when the shots are not going in…I want to get better at getting some of those back,” Auriemma said.

Foul trouble

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.