DePaul guard Natiah Nelson only had time to take a single dribble on her team’s first possession against the UConn women’s basketball team Wednesday before Azzi Fudd’s hands were planted directly in her face.
The instant Nelson turned after collecting the rebound from Sarah Strong‘s missed layup, Fudd was already in her space, body squared to cut off the passing lane toward the sideline Nelson was looking for. The Blue Demons’ guard panicked, fumbling the ball, and Fudd read her perfectly.
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The redshirt senior collected the loose ball casually with a quick outlet to Strong, but she never stopped moving as the Huskies reset their play. Fudd sprinted toward the the top of the arc, curling off a screen that left her open cutting through the paint, and junior guard Ashlynn Shade instantly threw her a crisp pass that she converted for a layup to kick off the team’s scoring.
It was first of three steals for Fudd in the first quarter in addition to her 13 points, setting the tone for the Huskies in an 86-40 rout of DePaul in Chicago. The star guard went on to finish with a team-high 25 points, shooting 59% from the field and going 4-for-6 on 3-pointers.
“She makes way more shots when she’s doing the other things, when she’s rebounding the ball, when she’s got assists, when she’s trying to strip guys bringing the ball on the floor,” coach Geno Auriemma said. “When she’s doing all those things, the shots go in. When she’s uber-focused on ‘I gotta make shots,’ it doesn’t go as well for her.”
Fudd made her name as a scorer, and she’s lived up to that reputation for most of the season. But in January, her famously smooth shot was suddenly rattling off the rim far more often than it dropped through the net. Though Fudd was still averaging more than 14 points per game, the redshirt senior hit just 32.1% of her 3-point attempts over an eight-game stretch — a massive drop-off from the 49.5% she made across November and December.
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Fudd wears the same cool, neutral expression in every scenario on the court, her demeanor unflappable to anyone on the outside looking in. Auriemma knew she was frustrated by the slump, and he encouraged her to lean into other aspects of her game while she struggled to regain her offensive rhythm.
“When she was younger, I think it would get to her and she would put a lot of pressure on herself, and right now she’s found a lot of other things to do on the court,” Auriemma said after Fudd shot 3-for-12 from the perimeter in her homecoming game at Georgetown. “She’s expanded what her vision of who she is as a player. (People) go, ‘Oh Azzi, she’s got the most beautiful shooting form and she’s got great footwork.’ That’s all well and good, but … she’s got a much broader view now, and she’s added a lot to her game. By doing that, I think she feels more fulfilled because she’s contributing in way more ways than making shots.”
Two games into February, Fudd is back to the best version of herself at both ends of the court. She snapped her sluggish streak with a spectacular 27-point outing in UConn’s rout of No. 19 Tennessee, then dropped 25 points Wednesday at DePaul for her highest-scoring performance of Big East play. Fudd knocked down nine 3-pointers across the pair of wins, as many she made in the previous five games combined, and she missed just five of her 14 attempts.
“She’s just so good. You can’t separate from her, because her ability to catch and shoot it so quickly, as soon as you separate she’s able to get a shot off,” DePaul coach Jill Pizzotti said. “She looks physically great. She looks fit and looks like she could go forever … I think there’s high expectations of her, and Azzi embraces that and wants to play at the top of her ability. When you’re not on the sideline, they’re an enjoyable team to watch, and she’s really special.”
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Fudd, a top-10 finalist for the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award given to the nation’s best shooting guard, is on track for a historic season in her fifth and final year with the Huskies. In just 100 game appearances, she sits at 10th on the program’s all-time list for career made 3-pointers with 246. Crystal Dangerfield, who previously held the No. 10 spot, took 134 games to make her 241 career threes. If Fudd continues at her current pace, she will finish the regular season in seventh and could get as high as fifth if UConn accomplishes its goal of winning another NCAA championship.
Fudd is also on the verge of unprecedented efficiency, shooting 49.2% from the field, 44.9% from beyond the arc and 97.1% at the free throw line — all of which are career bests. Only 11 players in the history of women’s college basketball have accomplished the feat, and Hall of Famer Sue Bird is the only UConn player currently in that exclusive club.
But this year is about more than scoring for Fudd as she prepares to enter the WNBA Draft, and Auriemma credits her developing two-way skillset with helping break her out of that January slump. Before her impressive outing at DePaul, she had four steals and a block against the Lady Vols and was key in holding star guard Talaysia Cooper to just eight points without a single made field goal in the second half. Fudd is averaging nearly double her previous career high in steals this season with 2.4 per game, and she ranks top 10 in the country in defensive win shares.
“When you start focusing on the other parts of the game, everything kind of falls into place,” Auriemma said. “It’s been, at least since the middle of last year, that Azzi’s defense has taken a huge jump from where it was the year before — her on-the-ball defense. Off the ball she was always pretty good, but her being healthy and feeling comfortable, I think she’s become a way better defender than when she first started.”
