December 25, 2012

The Huskies are coming

I'm sure there'll be a plethora of commentary on the upcoming Stanford/Connecticut game in the next few days, so I'll just give some basic facts here.

The game will be at Maples at 1:00 on Saturday. The game is sold out and promises to provide as much excitement as the Cardinal/Huskies matchup of 2010.

The game will be televised by ESPNU and broadcast by KZSU for those unlucky women's basketball fans who can't be in Maples.

It will be a battle between the top two ranked teams in the nation, both undefeated, for the coveted #1 spot.

There is extra incentive for each team to win:

  • Stanford will be protecting its home game winning streak of 82 games, the longest in the nation.
  • Connecticut would dearly love to break that streak as payback for Stanford's breaking its 90-game win streak in 2010.
This is how they match up statistically midway through the season:

Points per game 75.7 88.1
Scoring margin +24.0 +45.1
Field goal % 50.6% 54.0%
3-pointers per game 4.9 9.0
3-point % 34.8% 40.7%
Free throw % 74.2% 73.1%
Rebounds per game 44.5 40.4
Rebounding margin +12.9 +12.6
Assists per game 14.6 22.0
Turnovers per game 12.2 13.7
Assist/turnover ratio 1.20 1.61
Steals per game 5.5 12.2
Blocks per game 5.5 5.7
Win-loss record 11-0 10-0
Rank 1/1 2/2
RPI 1 4
Schedule strength 2 12

The Huskies' key players — their current freshman phenom, last season's freshman phenom, and four seasoned upper classmen — are:

#30 6'4" freshman forward Breanna Stewart has played on five USA Basketball gold-medal winning teams since her freshman year in high school, received numerous Player of the Year awards as a senior, and is on the Naismith award watch list this season.She's the Huskies' leading scorer (16.9 ppg), rebounder (7.2 rpg) and shot blocker (1.6 bpg). She makes 59.8% of her field goal attempts and has tallied two double-doubles.

#23, 6'0" sophomore forward Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis takes turns with Stewart as the Huskies' leading scorer. She's currently second with 16.4 ppg. She's the Huskies' most prolific three-point shooter — she's taken ⅓ of her shots from beyond the arc and made 54% of them, for an average of 2.9 per game. She also tallies 5.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 2.0 steals per game.

#31, 6'5" junior center Stefanie Dolson is the Huskies steady presence in the front court. She averages 11.7 points, 6.0 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.3 blocks per game.

#14, 5'7" junior guard Bria Hartley sprained her ankle last summer and got off to a slow start this season. She missed the first two games of the season, but is getting back to full form and scored in double digits in the Huskies' last two games. Her averages for the eight games she's played in are 10.1 points, 3.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.7 steals.

#34, 5'11" senior guard Kelly Faris has started every game as the Huskies point guard since her freshman year. She's always had an excellent assist/turnover ratio — 4.7 this season (#1 in the nation, as of 12/16) and 1.99 for her career to-date. She also averages 9.4 points. 3.5 rebounds and 2.6 steals per game.

#5, 5'10" redshirt senior guard Caroline Doty may have never achieved her full potentional after her series of ACL injuries, but she still contributes a strong 16 minutes per game to the Huskies' success. during which she averages 4.3 points (3.3 of them from beyond the arc), 1.7 rebounds and 2.1 assists. She's started eight of ten games this season.

Here are UConn's 2012-13 statistics and roster.

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