NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Oregon State coach Scott Rueck had only competed against UConn women’s basketball once before the his team met the No. 2 Huskies at the Baha Mar Women’s Championship on Monday night, but Rueck knew exactly how big a challenge the Beavers were facing entering the matchup.
Rueck began his head coaching career from 1996-2010 at Division III George Fox, a private Christian university just south of Portland, Oregon. Though he was about as far from Storrs, Conn. as you can get in the continental U.S., Rueck found himself captivated by coach Geno Auriemma’s UConn squads — first the dynamic duo of Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, then the dominance of Maya Moore and Tina Charles, and later the legendary four-peat led by Breanna Stewart. The Huskies were everything Rueck eventually hoped his teams could become.
“I think back to my Division III days where I’m off the grid coaching at George Fox and watching this Connecticut team that seemed to lead every statistical category, and I wanted to be like that,” Rueck said. “I wanted my team to have no weaknesses … They’ve been the most enjoyable team to watch play over the years because of their unselfishness, because of the style. I want (us) to be similar to that. I think the hardest team to guard is a team that moves the ball the way they do and makes the game look so effortless and easy, but plays so relentlessly hard.”
The only time Rueck has gone head-to-head with Auriemma previously was the 2016 Final Four, the Beavers’ first and only appearance in the national semifinal. UConn’s senior trio of Stewart, Morgan Tuck and Moriah Jefferson combined for 47 points to power the Huskies’ 80-51 victory, and the team went on to win its historic fourth consecutive NCAA championship over Syracuse.
The 2024-25 Huskies couldn’t be more different from that 2016 team on paper. Five of 11 healthy players are playing their first season at UConn this year, and fifth-year senior Paige Bueckers is the only active member of the roster that has played more than one complete season of college basketball in Storrs. But despite their lack of experience, Rueck said UConn is still UConn to its core.
“I think they’re as cerebral a team as you’re going to find, always have been,” Rueck said. “Every mistake you make, they make you pay for it, and there’s just a tenacity that they play with that is just what they’ve always done, and because of that, every moment you’re under attack. That’s a credit to their culture and how hard they play, no matter what the scoreboard says. You know every bounce is going to be contested. Every time you pick up the ball, it’s contested. Every shot is contested, and so because of that, they help and recover so quickly. They really did a nice job disrupting us for a majority of the game.”
The Huskies put together a balanced effort on both ends of the floor in their 71-52 win against Oregon State — at least for the first three quarters. Though only eight different players scored, the team had 25 assists on its 28 made field goals led by Bueckers with six. KK Arnold, who didn’t attempt a single shot in the game, and Azzi Fudd added five apiece, and five others recorded at least one. Arnold was also a key defensive disruptor with three steals, though no one came close to star freshman Sarah Strong’s six — tying her season high. The Huskies logged 24 points off 24 Oregon State turnovers, and they gave up just nine themselves with seven coming in the second half.
UConn currently ranks third in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio as a team, and Bueckers has the best individual ratio in the country with 23 assists and just three turnovers in five games. Arnold and Strong also rank in the top 15 nationally by the metric.
Bueckers attributes the Huskies’ early chemistry to a quality stretch of preseason workouts as players returning from injury started to become available. Fudd, who missed most of last season with an ACL and medial meniscus tear, was at least a partial participant in practice throughout the preseason, and Ayanna Patterson was also back from patellar tendonitis surgery for several weeks before she was limited again by a shoulder injury. Still, it has still surprised Bueckers to see the pieces come together already in November.
“We had a lot of people practicing, which was different for us, because we had a lot of different bodies, a lot of different combos we could get out on the floor,” Bueckers said. “But it’s kind of been shocking how quickly we’ve gelled. We don’t want to take it for granted and think that just because we looked good this game we’re going to look good in the next. As a team, we have a ‘win the day’ mentality. The past can’t help you, but the way you prepare can, so we’re just trying to win every single day, win every single practice, and continue to get better and not get complacent with what we just displayed.”
Auriemma is less surprised: He recruited all of these players, after all. Ball movement has been a major point of emphasis for the Huskies early in the season, and he said it’s a testament to the unselfishness of his roster that they’re already finding a rhythm as a group.
“We spend a lot of time on where you need to be when the ball is where, so that we know where you are, and all we have to do is touch it and move it to the next spot,” Auriemma said. “So we never have to worry about whether you’re going to be there or not, and we’re fortunate enough to have unselfish players who like to play that way. That’s the way we’ve always coached at Connecticut, but we happen to have a team that enjoys playing that way.”
