UConn’s offense shut down in Final Four loss to South Carolina

In the biggest game of the season, UConn women’s basketball’s offense fell flat. The Huskies scored just 48 points — their fewest in four years — on a season-worst 31.1 shooting in a 14-point loss to South Carolina in the Final Four on Friday.

“They took us out of our normal flow,” Ashlynn Shade said postgame. “As a team, shots didn’t fall when they needed to and we just needed to execute a little bit better.”

UConn got off to a solid start, jumping out to an 11-4 lead in the first 5:10. That proved to be 22.9 percent of the Huskies’ total points on the night. From there, they went through a scoring drought of 4:38 that stretched between the first and second quarters. Out of the break, they failed to record a point for the first 2:48 of the second half. Their next basket came 2:21 later. Their next? 2:19 onwards. UConn’s final field goal of the game came with 4:39 remaining.

The Huskies just couldn’t consistently generate enough offense.

“We held them to 62 points. You hold a team to 62 points, you think you’re going to win that game,” Auriemma said. “We just didn’t make the plays that we needed to make on the offensive end.”

South Carolina’s defense gave UConn fits. Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd struggled to gain any separation while the Huskies often settled for contested looks. Without an elite shot creator (a la Paige Bueckers), this UConn team relied heavily on ball movement and motion to create open shots. The Gamecocks made that difficult.

“UConn was a really well-oiled machine. If you didn’t have disruption and consistent disruption, you allow them to play as freely as they want to play and shoot as freely as they shoot, they’re very efficient and very, very good,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “Our whole objective was to get them to shoot as inefficiently as possible, make them put the ball on the floor. Don’t give them as many catch-and-shoot opportunities. I thought our kids really locked into that.”

When the Huskies did get quality chances, they didn’t knock them down.

“You gotta make shots, man. You can’t win with just your defense when you come to this point,” Auriemma said. “You gotta make some shots and unfortunately, we didn’t.”

With points at a premium, UConn needed one of its two superstars — Strong and Fudd — to step up. Neither did. Strong finished with 12 points on 4-16 shooting while Fudd only managed eight points on 3-15 shooting. 20 combined points matched their season-low.

Strong couldn’t shake Raven Johnson and grew increasingly frustrated as the contest wore on. After missing a shot at the end of the third quarter, the sophomore grabbed her jersey in frustration and ended up tearing it. She had to don a top with No. 55 for the final 10 minutes.

“It was an accident,” Strong said. “I missed my shot, ripped it by accident.”

She shot just 25.0 percent — matching the worst mark of her career — and made just four field goals — a season-low.

“Sometimes we do forget she’s a sophomore. She’s carried a huge load for this team. An awful lot falls on her,” Auriemma said. “Tonight, she’ll be the first to tell you that she is not proud of how her game went today. A lot of shots that you’ve seen her make for two years so easily today didn’t go in.”

Meanwhile, Fudd never found a rhythm. South Carolina successfully kept the ball out of her hands in the early going as she took just two shots in the first quarter — both misses. She connected on two triples in the second half to keep the Huskies close, only to finish 0-4 as the game slipped away.

“I feel like I let the team down today,” Fudd said.

UConn’s poor offense performance didn’t come out of nowhere, though. The unit has struggled throughout the NCAA Tournament.

In the first round, the Huskies sank just 21.2 percent (7-33) from three — its third-worst conversion rate of the season — against a UTSA team that finished two games over .500 overall. That was chalked up to rust after a 12-day layoff.

During the regionals, UConn scored a then-season-low 63 points against North Carolina and then only managed 70 points against Notre Dame — buoyed by 16 points from the line. Those woes were blamed on tight rims and over-inflated balls.

In the Final Four, South Carolina showed that the Huskies’ offensive problems went far deeper. While they ended up with their worst outing of the season, it was far from an outlier. UConn’s ability to consistently put points on the board vanished at the worst possible time and as a result, it won’t have a chance to defend its national championship on Sunday.