Nov. 6—There are times when Kaitlyn Chen, a graduate transfer from Princeton, will hear the words come out of UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma’s mouth and she knows she’s heard them before.
That’s because Princeton coach Carla Berube played for Auriemma. She’s a 1997 grad who was part of the Huskies’ 1995 national championship team.
“There have been some things that he’ll say and I’ll be like, ‘Huh. I’ve heard that for the past four years. Now I know where it came from,'” Chen said.
Chen was the 2023 Ivy League Player of the Year and a 2024 WBCA All-America honorable mention selection while at Princeton, where she finished with 1,276 points and played in three Division I NCAA tournaments.
Now, Chen, a 5-foot-9 guard, is one of five newcomers for second-ranked UConn — a team led by All-American Paige Bueckers — which will open the season at 7 p.m. Thursday, meeting Boston University at the XL Center (SNY).
Chen, a native of San Marino, California, was choosing between UConn and UCLA when she left Princeton, with UCLA sitting 12 miles from her home on the West Coast.
“I think here just felt more right and obviously coach Berube played here and she was a big help in my whole recruiting process,” Chen said recently.
“We always had to have a lot of energy with her practices for sure. There are a few times I’ve gone back to her because we talk a good amount. I mean, she’s always someone I can go talk to and she understands it probably more than anyone else I would know.”
Chen started in UConn’s 89-49 exhibition victory over Division II Fort Hays State on Sunday and played 35 minutes, finishing with 14 points, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals.
Auriemma said that, in general, a player joining a group that has been together for a long time can be left on the outside. Chen’s experience level, however, has helped her acclimate quickly to the intensity level and the nuances of UConn’s practices.
“Kaitlyn’s not a freshman,” Auriemma said. “She’s played a lot of basketball. She’s aggressive with the ball, she’s tough, she’s a tough competitor, she’s in fantastic shape. So, she’s been everything that we had hoped when we decided we wanted to bring her here.”
“The girls are awesome,” said Chen, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan who stayed up late last week to watch World Series games on her phone. “I feel like basketball-wise it took me a little bit more time to sort of settle in and sort of feel my way through everything. But I feel like I’m finally getting into the groove of things and I’m feeling more confident and comfortable each day.”
The other newcomers on the UConn roster are 6-foot-5 redshirt freshman Jana El Alfy and freshmen Allie Ziebell, Sarah Strong and Morgan Cheli.
El Alfy, a native of Egypt, enrolled early at UConn in January of the 2022-23 season and did not compete, instead looking forward to her true freshman season in 2023-24. El Alfy then ruptured her Achilles during the U19 Women’s World Cup in July and sat out all of last season, which saw the Huskies (33-6) make a Final Four appearance in Cleveland, serving as her teammates’ most enthusiastic cheerleader.
Now, finally on the floor, El Alfy contributed nine rebounds and also had four fouls in UConn’s exhibition win.
“She is a caged wild animal that needs to be let loose,” Auriemma said of El Alfy. “But you know what happens when you open the cage to a wild animal; they don’t just walk out calmly. So there’s nothing calm about her. So we’re going to have to have a lot of talks with the officials when she gets in the game.
“She’s got a lot of emotion to her. She puts a lot of herself into the game.”
Strong, a 6-foot-2 forward, leads the freshman class as the 2024 national high school player of the year. She finished her high school career at Grace Christian in Sanford, North Carolina, with 2,302 points, 1,628 rebounds and 41 straight victories.
She started Sunday for UConn and had 11 points, eight rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block.
“We’re encouraging her to just be herself,” Auriemma said of the reserved Strong. “I think sometimes kids come here to play and they want to blend in so badly that they kind of don’t stay true to who they are. You know, you have to be who you are.”
UConn’s roster is slowly rounding into shape, while the Huskies are still missing KK Arnold, Azzi Fudd, Ayanna Patterson, Caroline Ducharme and Cheli due to injuries.
The Huskies now have three former national high school players of the year in Bueckers, Fudd and Strong. Bueckers finished the exhibition win with 27 points on 12 of 14 shooting with nine rebounds.
BU is 1-0, coming off a 60-48 victory in its opener Monday against Northeastern. The Terriers were led in that game by 5-5 senior guard Alex Giannaros with 23 points.
