Huskies Late First Half Rally Pushes UConn
Over St. John's

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STORRS, CT (January 31) -- Sophomore Ann Strother scored a career-high 27 points and collected 10 rebounds to lead the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team to a 82-49 win over St. John’s in BIG EAST action on Saturday afternoon in front of the usual sellout crowd of 10, 167 at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs.

The Huskies improve their record to 16-2 overall, 7-1 in the BIG EAST. With the win UConn extended its home court winning-streak against BIG EAST opponents to 105 games and the game marked the 48th-straight win at Gampel and 79th consecutive sellout in Storrs.

With seven lead changes in the first half, Connecticut finally pushed ahead of the Red Storm for good with 5:30 left in the first half. Freshman Liz Sherwood made two consecutive lay-ups to pull UConn ahead 31-30. Shemika Stevens brought the Red Strom as close as one with a jumper in the lane, but UConn went on a 9-0 run, along with St. John’s three-minute scoring drought giving the Huskies a 44-35 edge at the half.

St. John’s was held to only 14 second half points, and was scoreless in the final 7:08 of the contest. The Red Storm was 4-of-24 from the field (17%) and missed all eight of their attempts from long range. The Huskies were solid in the second half from the free-throw line, shooting a solid 83% on 15-of-18 shooting.

Strother scored 19 of her 27 points in the first half, and hit seven three-point shots on 7-of-13 shooting. Her seven three-pointers represented a career-best effort, and she recorded her first double-double of the season and third of her career as she snared 10 rebounds. Sherwood finished the game with a career-high 10 rebounds and also added nine points. Junior Ashley Battle scored a season-high 15 points and grabbed eight rebounds for Connecticut.

Kim MacMillan and Danielle Chambers each scored 11 points for the Red Storm Stevens added 10.

Connecticut will face the top-ranked Tennessee Lady Vols on Thursday, February 5 in Knoxville, Tenn.  Game time is set for 7:00 p.m. and will be televised nationally on espn2.   

POST GAME NOTES

• Game marks 79th consecutive sellout at Gampel Pavilion.
• Win marks UConn’s 48th straight at Gampel Pavilion.
• Win extends UConn’s home-court winning streak vs. BIG EAST opponents to 105 games.
• Win marks UConn’s 155th straight vs. an unranked opponent at home.
• Victory extends UConn’s winning streak over St. John’s to 20 consecutive games.
• Liz Sherwood finished with a season-high 10 rebounds.
• Ann Strother scored a career-high 27 points, while shooting 7-of-13 from 3-point-range - her seven 3-pointers also represent a career-best effort.
• Strother registered her first double-double of the season and the third of her career with 27 points and 10 rebounds.
• Diana Taurasi’s streak of 31 games in double-figure points end after her two-points, six-minute outing vs. St. John’s.
• 33-point win marks UConn’s 13th by a double-figure margin.
• Strother’s seven 3-pointers tied for the second-best single-game effort in the program’s history.
• Ashley Battle scored a season-high 15 points while shooting 6-of-12 from the field. She also added eight rebounds.
• Maria Conlon moves into a tie for seventh-place on the UConn career 3-point list with Svetlana Abrosimova with her current total of 141.

POST GAME QUOTES
UConn Coach Geno Auriemma
on post game locker room discussion
We were just trying to get some things squared away before the rest of the week. Basically it was just a State of the Union address: where are we now, where do we need to go, how can we get there, what did we like and didn’t like, what needs to change, what can we do better, and just a whole bunch of things. It was good to get it while it was fresh in their minds, because they could see it happening today, in all that was good and all that was not good.

on Diana Taurasi
I think that she came down on that one breakaway where she was chasing a kid and she may have landed funny, and she felt something in her back. She said at halftime that she felt fine, and she probably could have played no problem, but I didn’t want to take any chances on it. So, I’m sure I’ll go in the training room afterwards and find out that she’s fine, but I just thought it was a good precautionary measure.

on Ann Strother
We’ve been waiting a long time for a game like that with Ann, before you start to wonder, ‘Does she have it in her?'

We had a lot of open shots, and Ann’s were the only ones going in.

on game
I still think we could have done a much better job of getting the ball in the post, and getting to the free-throw line more. There certainly were enough fouls being called that we could have taken advantage of. I didn’t want to get too animated with the officials because one of them is doing the game on Thursday night, so I didn’t want to go down there on a bad note. But, I thought we could have taken advantage of how many whistles there were, and we didn’t do a good job of that.

The second half was a lot better. Our defense was really good the second half. I think we wore them down a little bit, our offense was a lot better, there was a lot more movement, and we got out on the break a little bit more. The second half was completely different than the first half. I would have been much happier in the first half, if we played in the first half the way we did in the second half.

on team
There’s a personality type on our team, and the personality type is something that I’ve said all along: when we’re threatened, we really respond. But, we have to get probed a lot before we respond sometimes. Yet sometimes we respond right away if the threat is right there.

on preparation for Thursday’s game
If we prepare for this week like it’s the NCAA tournament, then I think that what we’re saying is that this game on Thursday is the most important game of the year. Now, having said that, the game on Thursday is the most important game of the year, because it’s the next game, and we’ve always treated it that way.

There are a lot of things that we need to do for ourselves to make us a better team, and that’s probably what we’re going to concentrate on this week.

Ashley Battle
On Geno’s post-game comments in the locker room
We just talked about how mentally prepared we have to be for the next couple months, and trying to turn a new leaf today and start off going on the right path. I do think we needed to hear that. We played well the game before [at Virginia Tech] and today we came out a little flat, and we can’t do that. We’re an emotional roller coaster right now. We need to be steady, or not even steady, but increasing on a positive slope. I think in the second half we were moving down the right path.

On focusing more on defense in the second half
Definitely. We only gave up 18 points [in the first half] at Virginia Tech, who’s pretty good, and pretty solid. Nothing against St. John’s, but they’re 8-10 and we gave up 30 points [in the first half] to them. Definitely we need to re-focus from what we were doing in the first half, and come out in the second half on a mission.

On why today’s locker room talk will work
It better work. Each individual takes it differently. You can’t speak for anybody else, but you know what you have to do in order to push someone else to do the same thing. If I change, then maybe it’ll be a chain reaction… just a trickle-down theory. It started with [Geno], and now it’s going to go through the coaches, then it’ll go through [Diana] and then probably through the rest of us.

On whether the upcoming Tennessee game will help with re-focusing the team
Definitely. But it really doesn’t matter who we’re playing on Thursday, but I’m just saying that trying to get it to come out is the hard part. We know what we need to do, but I don’t know why it’s taking such effort to let it come out and let it shine.

Ann Strother
On if she got a sense early on that her shot was there
Yeah, I think so. It’s kind of weird… when you’re out there you feel like the basket it huge and you can’t miss it. I really felt like I was wide open most of the time, and I didn’t have to work to get most of my shots. [St. John’s] was keying on D and then Maria, so the wings were wide open.

On rebounding
We started off not [rebounding well]. Its been something we’ve worked on in practice, like having really, really tough rebounding practices, so I don’t know. I think maybe we just came out with the thought that they weren’t a very good rebounding team and [the rebounds] were just going to come to us, and that’s not the way it was. [St. John’s] crashed the boards, and it was tough.

On Diana being out
I actually don’t really know what happened. I was surprised she didn’t start in the second half, so I figured maybe she would be out for a while, but I didn’t know. I don’t think you can just sit there and worry about [Diana being out]. I think we had to come out after halftime and really hit them hard and play defense, and get it going even though she was out. I think it was a good point of the game that we did end up coming together and getting the job done even though she wasn’t in the game. It’s just doing that when she’s in there too, that’s going to make us the best team we can be.

On Liz Sherwood’s performance
That’s the kind of stuff she can do, and we need that from her every single day. When she’s in there and she puts her mind to getting rebounds and things like that, there’s no one that can stop her. She’s big, she’s strong and she’s everywhere… so when she puts her mind to it there’s no one that can even compete with her.

St. John’s Head Coach Kim Barnes Arico
I thought we battled, and our goal is to play hard every game to make us better. I thought we stepped up to the challenge, especially in the first half, but we played a fantastic team in UConn and they were able to show the weaknesses we have as a team.

On the play of the team’s defense
What we tried to do was to stop #3 Diana Taurasi by playing someone on her and having everyone else in a diamond. I think we caught UConn off guard for the first couple of minutes, but UConn did a great job at adjusting and #43 Ann Strother had a terrific game. When we tried to mix things up on defense and tried to open things up for other people, we hoped that they would have an off night and hoped that they missed shots, but Ann Strother made her shots and played really well today.

On the size of UConn’s players
They are a very physical and strong team, and they have a lot of size over us. UConn is a terrific team and we battled, but we need to get better and we know what our challenges are, but they did a great job and once again, UConn is a terrific team.

On the team’s performance in the first half
As a team, we are getting better in our performance during the first half of games, and we are noticing that. Our last five games, we have been close at the half or being up at the half, and a feel that we are approving. I don’t think that we have the horses and we need to get tougher both physically and mentally to allow us to play better in the second half.

#4 Kim MacMillan
On the lack of shot opportunities
I really didn’t have good opportunities at an open look because of their length and size. UConn does a great job at guarding you close up, especially due to their length.

#10 Shemika Stevens
On playing in front of a sell-out crowd
I don’t know how my other two teammates feel, but this is one of the reasons why I chose to go to a Big East school. For myself, it was a great opportunity to be able to play in front of a crowd of this size.

#33 Danielle Chambers
On her style of play and how UConn was able to defend it
I like to attack the basket and I like to be able to play a physical type of game. Facing UConn today, it was very tough competition and I like being able to play these types of teams.