University of Connecticut Athletics
UConn Takes First Win of the Season Over Western Michigan
11/23/2003 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
STORRS, CT (November 23, 2003) – Senior All-America Diana Taurasi scored 26 points on 10 of 11 shooting to lead three teammates in double figures as top-ranked Connecticut easily defeated Western Michigan, 95-46, to begin defense of their back-to-back national championships, Sunday afternoon before a sellout crowd of 10,167 at the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion.
Taurasi was magnificent throughout the contest, teaming with center Jessica Moore to score 34 points in the first half, as the Huskies raced out to a 53-21 halftime lead. UConn scored the first eight points of the game and extended its lead to 36-12 with 8:17 to play in the first half. Moore connected on nine of 11 from the field in the first half, while Taurasi was six of seven, including four of five from three-point range. Moore finished with 18 points and four rebounds.
The Huskies were in such control that all 10 players that played scored, and no one played more than 28 minutes. Taurasi added game-high totals of eight rebounds and seven assists. Sophomore forward Barbara Turner also dished out seven assists.
Ashley Battle came off the bench to score 11, while Ann Strother scored 10 points. Maria Conlon ran the point efficiently, scoring six, dishing out six helpers and committing no turnovers. Nicole Wolff had six points and five rebounds.
UConn dominated inside, scoring a whopping 54 points in the paint, and outscored the Broncos 33-11 off turnovers.
Maria Jilian scored nine points to pace Western Michigan, who slipped to 0-2 on the season.
The Huskies will return to action on Tuesday evening, when they play host to Florida State at the Hartford Civic Center. Tip-off is slated for 7:00 p.m., and the contest will be televised locally by CPTV.
POST GAME QUOTES
Geno Auriemma
(on Barbara Turner)
Barbara is on her way to becoming a pretty good basketball player. I don’t know what I’m going to have to complain about after that. She’s made a lot of progress.
The few times that I really concentrate on watching her play I see she has great instincts, and the more she works at it the better she’s getting.
(on game)
You get 34 assists and it means that people are passing the ball and that we shot the ball well. The other team really wasn’t able to stop a lot of the stuff that we were doing.
I just didn’t want us to be sloppy. At one point I said, “You know sometimes when we do five on zero and just running our offense with no defense we throw it away more than we did today.” There’s a certain level of concentration and we weren’t sloppy, we weren’t careless, and Diana kind of set the tone early. It was good, but I don’t think I’m going to take the next month off and let my assistants run the team. Western Michigan is Western Michigan, and they’re not at this point in time other than being well coached, well drilled and their kids playing hard, a match right now for us. Tuesday will be a little different. Tuesday will be a lot more physical and it’ll be a lot harder to get things done.
(on Jessica Moore)
There’s a lot of things that I think Jessica wants to prove, not necessarily to anybody on the outside, but she wants to see herself as, “I can do everything that everybody else did before me that played that position,” and she’s pretty determined to do that. She takes tremendous pride in what she does. I said going into the season that I think she’s one of the five best centers in the country, and forget one of the top 10 players in the Big East. But people don’t see Jessica everyday like I do.
In four years she’s never missed a day of practice. She comes in with the same attitude everyday. She works as hard as she can everyday, and she’s won every sprint I think in the four years she’s been here. She’s always got a smile on her face, and her eyes are just wide open. She picks things up quickly because she’s always paying attention.
She was worried that she might not be good enough to play here. And now look at her.
Now she walks in and you can see the confidence that just takes over a room. But before she might walk in, and it’s there, but she’s not really ready to act like that because she doesn’t feel like she’s at that point yet. But now I just think that she feels like she’s there. But before it was in there, but she wouldn’t let anybody see it.
You take a look at Jessica and you look at her, listen to her, watch her and see what she does, and you take the whole into account and you say, “This is Connecticut basketball.”
Jessica Moore
On the height advantage over Western Michigan: “I think that was the first and only team we’ll play against that was that small, and I was actually really surprised at how small they were. In my offensive game I really didn’t do any post moves, I was just open and my team was able to get me the ball.”
On her outside game: “I’ve really been focusing on that and working on my outside shot, because that will help our offense and our defense, just having people push it out a little bit so we can get our inside and our outside game going and not have so much pressure on the post.”
Diana Taurasi
On the scoring: “We’re always going to be better when everyone’s got the hot hand, and tonight we had four people with double-figures, but also, everyone who played today scored for us.”
On Jessica Moore: “What’s really opening up the game for her is that she’s hitting that 15-footer… she’s got the left-hand drive… it just really does a lot for her.”
Barbara Turner
On Diana: “It does a lot for us [when’s she’s making shots] and the fact that she’s getting the open spots and we’re doing a good job of getting her open, definitely helps our team out. Anytime we can do that and move the ball the way we did today, then we have a pretty good chance of being successful.”
Nicole Wolff
On the team’s overall performance: “I think everyone was really relaxed coming into this game, and we’ve been practicing well and really been clicking as a team. I think we’ve improved a lot since last year, and you can tell. We can feel that the crowd is into it, and everybody played well and we ran what we wanted to on offense.”
On her mental state today versus exhibition games: “I was really focusing on relaxing, and having fun more than anything, and I think that really worked. The coaches have been telling me that, especially Tonya, to just go out there and have fun and the rest will fall into place.”
Ann Strother
On the team’s overall performance: “We were moving the ball really well, and everyone was cutting and getting open spots. I definitely think we had a little bit of a height advantage especially inside with Jess and Barbara, so we were looking to get them the ball a lot.”
On Jessica Moore: “She’s playing awesome. She’s made such big improvements since last year and she’s playing so aggressively and so strong right now, and its hard to stop her, no matter who we’re playing I think.”
WMU HEAD COACH RON STEWART
Opening comments:
I appreciate the opportunity to play here. It’s a chance to see part of the country that we don’t get to visit too much and play against an outstanding group. It was kind of interesting in the latter part of the game. I just wanted the clock to run to be honest. I heard the kids on the bench talking about the UConn players and the plays that they made and the kids were somewhat in awe. I was glad to hear that my assistant coaches weren’t saying that, but the kids on the end of the bench were. We’re not a club that are ready for this. They played very well and they taught us how to play the game. It’s probably an excellent breather type opener for them. For us, it’s not necessarily back to the drawing board but it’s back to our level for a couple of games. We have a better chance. We tried to compete but we never could defend. That’s credit to the, but that’s an area that we lacked.
Were you impressed by their passing?
I think you have to be impressed with the way they passed the basketball and the way they moved it to find the person. Unfortunately we sometimes left them more open then open and they found them. I thought Diana was nice to us not too long before Geno took her out she had the opportunity to shoot another three and didn’t bury it on us. She passed it. I think there was a little bit of that in the second half of the game, but for the most part they really got after it. They have fun doing it. They pass the ball. That’s probably what we can take from it, as far as our players are concerned, is learning a little bit more about how to play the game. We were overwhelmed and couldn’t make a lot of plays. It was probably fun to watch for them.
Was it fun to watch Diana do stuff like that?
You probably aren’t going to win coming in here. Not too many folks do. So, you have a realistic approach. You don’t want to lose club. I don’t think that happened to us at all. It was fun to watch Diana. Right at the start when we walked into the arena she was shooting around and a loose ball came over to our end of the court and right there was when it started. I think there’s a person there that’s a whole lot more than just the best basketball player. To watch her just physically cup the ball and make that pass and do those things (is impressive). I looked like the village idiot today. I’ve been around a lot of basketball games over the years over the past 30 years and seen a lot of very good players but she’s just a person that brings so much.
I’m a neophyte in women’s basketball but I honestly have not seen one like her. I saw Diana in the AAU before she was with the Huskies. I had a feeling that she was going to be pretty special back in those days. I think it’s the physical strength, size and agility. She can do so much with the basketball. She does so much with the basketball. She’s confident. She makes plays. She does not try to press things and is an outstanding shooter to go along with those other attributes.
UConn vs. Western Michigan Post-Game Notes:
· UConn improves to 22-8 in season openers
· UConn improves to 15-4 in season openers under Geno Auriemma
· UConn improves to 25-5 in home openers and is 17-1 in home openers under
Auriemma, and the team has won their last 13 home openers.
· Willnett Crockett did not dress
· 64th straight home win and 45th win at Gampel
· 48th straight regular-season home game win
· 68th straight regular-season win
· 97th straight sellout and 76th straight at Gampel
· 14th straight game with double-figure points for Taurasi
· Most points (53) in a first half since UConn scored 54 in the first half against
Pepperdine on Dec. 20, 2002
· Each of UConn’s first 17 field goals were assisted.
· The 32-point halftime lead was UConn’s largest since leading ODU 55-33 at the
half on March 23, 2002 in the Mideast Regional Final.
· Barbara Turner tallied a career-high seven assists
