University of Connecticut Athletics
Defense Sparks Women's Basketball Win Over Boston College
11/17/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
The win was the Huskies’ third straight to start the season, while the Eagles drop to 2-1.
Connecticut appeared to have control of the contest, leading 41-29 early in the second half before the Eagles’ Kindyll Dorsey drilled a pair of three-pointers bringing Boston College to within six, at 41-35 with 11:50 to play. But that was as close as the visitors would get. Wilnett Crockett (Harbor City, Calif.) hit a lay-up to start a 12-2 run to enable the Huskies to earn the hard-fought victory. Included in the big run were consecutive steals and fast break lay-ups by freshman Renee Montgomery (St. Albans, W. Va.).
Senior Ann Strother (Castle Rock, Colo.) and sophomore Charde Houston (San Diego, Calif.) led the Huskies in scoring with 11 points apiece. Montgomery finished with 10, while senior Barbara Turner (Cleveland, Ohio) had eight points and seven rebounds off of the bench. She also dished out a game-high four assists in 30 productive minutes.
Boston College scored the game’s first five points and led by as many as six before the Huskies were able to take their first lead of the game on a lay-up by Strother the put UConn ahead 15-13 with 9:10 to play in the first half. UConn began to pull away late in the first half, outscoring Boston College 11-2 to end the half. The teams went to the locker rooms with the Huskies enjoying a 32-22 advantage.
UConn shot 46% (23 of 50) from the field and limited the Eagles to just 33% (18 of 55) shooting. The Huskies forced 19 turnovers, which were converted into 28 points. Led by Montgomery, the Huskies enjoyed a 14-0 advantage in fast break points.
Strother moved past Kris Lamb into 21st place on the all-time Husky scoring list with her 11 points. Dorsey and Kathrin Ress each scored 11 points for Boston College.
The victory gave the Huskies a perfect 11-0 record in the Preseason WNIT and earned Connecticut a berth in the tournament finals on Sunday against Oklahoma at Gampel Pavilion. Game time is set for 2:00 p.m. and the game will be televised by CPTV.
Game Notes
ü UConn took its first lead of the game at the 9:10 mark of the first half at 15-13.
ü UConn’s 11-5 deficit at the 13:14 mark of the first half marked its largest through the first three games this season.
ü UConn out-scored Boston College 15-5 over the final 7:44 of the first half.
ü With tonight’s win, UConn improves to 11-0 all-time in the preseason WNIT.
ü The Huskies advance to the Preseason WNIT Championship game where they will host Oklahoma at Gampel Pavilion on Sunday, November 20 beginning at 2 p.m.
ü UConn improves to 68-14 all-time in games played in November.
ü UConn improves to 61-1 in its last 62 games at Gampel Pavilion and 213-16 all time.
ü UConn improves to 20-10 all-time vs. opponents from the Atlantic Coast (ACC) Conference.
ü UConn improves to 37-14 all-time vs. Boston College including a 22-3 mark in home games. UConn is a perfect 15-0 vs. Boston College in games played at Gampel Pavilion.
ü Ann Strother’s 11 points moved her past Kris Lamb into 21st place on the UConn career scoring list with her current total of 1,245.
ü With tonight’s win over Boston College, UConn extends its winning streak vs. non-ranked teams at home to 173 straight.
ü UConn put the game away with a 12-2 run over a 4:21 span in the second half.
ü All nine Huskies that saw game action scored at least two points.
Post Game Quotes
University of Connecticut
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On the game
“We won. You can’t be upset with a win. It was one of those knock down, drag out kind of games where you’ve got to find a way to win it and we did. We didn’t fair too well last year in games like this so it’s a good sign so far.”
What did you see tonight that you enjoyed?
“I thought we did a lot of things that, maybe, we wouldn’t have done a year ago or couldn’t do a year ago. I thought our half-court defense was pretty good. I thought we did a decent job defensively. And our offense sputters; some days it’s good, some days it’s not so good. They’re not an easy team to play. They’re not an easy team to get open off. We’ve got to do a much better job of getting our shooters open. I don’t think we did a great job of that tonight for whatever reason. But, we had spurts where we looked okay. We’re three games in. Renee (Montgomery) played pretty well; Ann (Strother) had a pretty decent game. We’ve just not gotten to that point, after three games, where we’re going to look like it’s all smooth sailing. It’s not going to look like that against a very physical team like Boston College.”
Were you pleased with the energy of the post players tonight?
“A lot of the things that we do in the post are a little odd in a sense that you would think that we would catch the ball in the post and go right by people and there are times when we just settle for jump shots. We’re not consistent yet. I thought we competed pretty hard against their big guys. We’ve still got a long way to go. Sunday’s going to be tough.”
“Renee plays in spurts. I’d like to see her get more involved. I’d like to see her get after a little bit more. I’d like to see her force the issue a little bit more. But, I thought she had a pretty good game. I think it was her best game of the three regular season games she’s played so far.”
On the defense
“We haven’t really spent a lot of time on it. As you can see, we’ve spent the majority of our time on offense.”
“Early on I think she was trying a little too hard to try to score. I think that once we got out of that, we were pretty good at getting her involved in a lot of different things rather than her just going down to the low post and try to muscle her way around. There were a couple of times that we didn’t find her at the high post where I thought she was open.”
Do you think your post guards have something to prove?
“I think Brittany, Barbara, and Charde they all came out with an attitude that they wanted prove that they’re better than they were the first game…. They just want to prove what they can do and I think you saw bits and pieces of it tonight.”
You have a lot of contributions coming off the bench at every game.
“Our bench is really deep. It’s definitely the deepest it’s been since I’ve been here and any night you can have somebody come out, Kalana, Nicole, you can have anybody come out and really put up a lot of numbers.
How strong of a defensive team do you think you guys can be?
“Tonight we really got after it. I don’t know how many shot clock violations they had but I know that that’s something we’ve been really trying to do. We haven’t really worked on our defense at practice, which is the funny thing, because usually we spend a lot of time working on our press or just our half court defense…. Defense is an attitude and I think we’ve really been taking it seriously and getting after it.”
Do you think you need to work on defense or is it more about the attitude?
“I think you need to work on it, definitely. There are little things we can work on, like how to guard screens and stuff like that, but when you come out it really is just an attitude.”
How do you feel you and the other post player’s did this game?
“It was a step in the right direction, I think. Offensively we didn’t do as well as we wanted to but defense was the key. We did a good job of keeping them off the box, boxing them out, not letting them get second shots, and pretty much trying to frustrate them.”
Do the post players as a group feel better about how you did tonight?
“Of course we feel better, because, like I said before, it was a post game and if we were able to establish ourselves defensively or offensively then that would get a lot going for our team. I think we did that and we had the energy that we needed to have to carry our team. I think that’s good going into this next game because they have good inside players and good outside shooters so as long as we can keep having the same rotations and the same energy and enthusiasm, then I think we’ll do well next game too.”
Were you concentrating on filling up the box score?
“… the more things that I can do to help this team, the better. That doesn’t necessarily have to be scoring. That’s not something that I have to have in order to make my game good. As long as I keep attacking the glass and keep finding the open people, setting the right screens and being in the right place defensively, then I think that’s going to help our team. Points don’t really matter to me right now.”
Were you really motivated tonight?
“Yes, we were because, like I said, we knew, coming in that this was our test that they had really good inside players. Queenan had gotten a lot done during the previous games and she was pretty much a double-double a night, 17, 18 points. We knew if we could kind of contain her and do a good job on her, then that would say a lot going into these next games. Courtney Paris is the same, she’s double-double, she’s really physical, she hits the glass really hard, so I think this was good preparation for the next game.”
All around tonight’s game showed a solid effort where everyone pitched in.
“It was, the players coming off the bench can give the same as our starting five. You don’t have to count on just one player to do amazing things on the court for us.”
Are you looking to add a charge when you come into the game?
“You have to, otherwise there’s no purpose for going into the game. If you don’t bring something, as far as more energy, then you’re no use, so I try to at least bring some energy from somewhere."
Did you see many chances to go to the hoop during this game?
“There were times when I took the jump shot and after I released it I knew I should have gone to the basket. Going by them my first step is my advantage, so after I realized that taking the jump shot isn’t going to be effective, then I started going to the basket.”
Would you say that defense tonight was key to the game and that it set the offense going?
“Knowing that they like to get the high-low is something that we tried our best tonight to take away and knowing that if we allowed them to get every shot, to get every look at the basket that they wanted to, then it was going to be a long night.”
When you had those two steals could you tell that you were going to have those opportunities?
“It was just do or die and I just went for it because I know even if I don’t get it and she leaves me standing my teammates are going to help me and I’m just going to pick of their man. Basically, I just trust in my teammates that even if I don’t get it they’ll pick up my man and I’ll pick up theirs and we’ll just be back into defense.”
How would you say your post guards played this game?
“Our post guards played excellent because …this is probably the first game where they’ve had big post players like ours so this was probably our post players’ biggest test so far because everybody else they’ve been playing against is so small. They did really well on help defense and the other team had a good high-low and they guarded that really well so our post players, they showed us a lot.”
Boston College
Head Coach Cathy Inglese
“We showed some nice thing throughout the game. We kept their guards down in the first half and I was pleased that we did not give up. Overall, we are doing some good things. One frustration was we gave them too many easy balls and we need to be more mature in getting the ball in the post. “
“We will get better as the season goes on, but this was a good game for us. It will help us clean up our act and it sends a message to our kids.”
“There weren’t as many people in the stands. It was a little quieter, but usually we play them later in the season which by then, fans knows the teams better. But, there were still some hecklers out there.”
