After a dominant 30-point win over No. 19 Tennessee on Sunday, there are just eight Big East games standing between the UConn women’s basketball team and an undefeated regular season.
It’s seems all but inevitable for the No. 1 Huskies, who are cruising through conference play this year and have won 59 straight meetings with Big East opponents dating back to 2023. The program hasn’t entered the NCAA Tournament without a loss since 2017-18, when All-Americans Napheesa Collier and Katie Lou Samuelson led the team to 36 consecutive victories before falling on a buzzer-beater to Notre Dame in the Final Four.
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Though UConn’s total dominance isn’t a shock coming off of last year’s national championship run, the Huskies entered 2025-26 with major questions about who would fill the leadership void left by superstar Paige Bueckers and starting point guard Kaitlyn Chen. But it’s been remarkably smooth sailing behind the duo of All-American sophomore Sarah Strong and redshirt senior sharpshooter Azzi Fudd. The pair rank first and third respectively in the Big East in scoring, and both have been spectacular in UConn’s biggest matchups at both ends of the floor. They combined for 53 of the team’s 96 points against Tennessee, and both rank top 10 in the country in defensive win shares.
“Sarah’s voice is getting louder. Azzi, she doesn’t use her voice a lot, but when she does, it’s pretty impactful,” Auriemma said Sunday after the rout. “But I think leadership is, ‘We really need a bucket right now,’ and you make one. ‘We really need to stop the bleeding, and we need a 3-point play. We need a blocked shot here.’ To me it’s doing those things that really have to be done right now that makes the rest of the team go, ‘That’s why they are who they are.’”
The Huskies return to Big East play on Wednesday for a rematch against DePaul in Chicago, and they’ll look to keep their momentum rolling against the last-place team in the conference. The first time UConn met the Blue Demons on Dec. 7, the team earned its biggest win of the season with a 102-35 rout at Gampel Pavilion. The Huskies scored 52 points off of 32 forced turnovers, and they had their second-most steals in any game this year with 23.
Two months later, the Huskies have won 18 consecutive games by at least 25 points — the longest streak by any team in at least the last 25 years. They have yet to allow more than 55 points in a conference matchup, and their average margin of victory in the Big East is more than 43 points. It’s difficult to find a notable flaw in UConn’s game right now: The team currently has the No. 1 scoring defense and No. 2 scoring offense in the country, and it ranks top 5 nationally in assists, field goal percentage, 3-point percentage, steals, and turnover margin.
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But even as the Huskies run through every team in their path, Fudd said the final scores become irrelevant once they get in the practice gym with Auriemma.
“Oh, we still get a lot of stuff pointed out to us,” Fudd said with a smile. “In film session you would think, ‘You guys played really well, there’s a lot of good clips.’ No, we are definitely humbled every day in practice. From the outside I see how it could look like it’s kind of hard to find those things to work on, but every day in practice it’s a challenge between the coaches and the practice guys and us trying to make each other better.”
Auriemma said this time of year is mostly about cleaning up minor issues that can make or break a game against more challenging opponents. Whether it’s adjusting defensive rotations or getting more active on the boards, he can always find an imperfection to dig into that will keep his team sharp.
“The hardest thing is to keep getting better, because we’re nit-picking at some things,” Auriemma said. “Usually it’s on the defensive end, rebounding, trying to make sure that we do an even better job of spreading shots around … It’s just making sure we’re not easy to defend.”
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DePaul also provides another opportunity for UConn to continue challenging some of its less-experienced players who need to be ready to contribute come March. USC transfer Kayleigh Heckel put up a season-high 16 points in the first meeting with the Blue Demons, and sophomore guard Allie Ziebell is coming off of back-to-back double digit scoring performances headlined by her record-tying 10 3-pointers against Xavier last Wednesday. Wisconsin transfer Serah Williams is also finding her footing, scoring at least 10 points in three of the last four games, and the Huskies need her to continue developing especially as freshman forward Blanca Quinonez recovers from a minor shoulder injury that sidelined her for the last two games.
“We’ve tried to make a concerted effort to test some of these guys and find out how they’re going to react,” Auriemma said. “At this time of the year you just want to be playing with a lot of confidence. You want to be you want to be feeling good about yourself … I tell our players this all the time: We could win 90-30, but if you play lousy, you’re happy we won but you’re not really a happy camper going home. The object is to play really well and and have that kind of confidence, and it’ll carry over … The more players that we have that feel like that, I think the harder we’re going to be to play against.”
In Tennessee test, UConn women’s basketball proves it’s prepared for championship chase
How to watch UConn women’s basketball at DePaul
Site: Wintrust Arena, Chicago
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Time/date: 8 p.m., Wednesday
Team records: UConn 23-0 (12-0), DePaul 5-19 (2-11)
Series record: UConn leads 26-1
Last meeting: 102-35 UConn, Dec. 7 at Gampel Pavilion
TV: truTV
Streaming: HBO Max
Radio: UConn Sports Network on FOX Sports 97.9
