After arriving in Albany, Geno Auriemma felt something he hadn’t experienced in years.
The longtime UConn coach was nervous to the point of nausea, and he remained that way until the tip of the Elite Eight game.
The unpredictability of this team and this season had Auriemma’s stomach in knots, wondering if this was the weekend the Huskies’ season would come to an end. With Louisville as their Elite Eight matchup, it was a very real possibility.
And then, five minutes into the first quarter, sophomore Megan Walker pulled up from behind the arc and drained a 3-pointer. Two and a half minutes later she hit another. A minute after that she sank a third. The worries about who would step up and whether the Huskies could compete this far into the tournament with two fairly inexperienced starters began to wane.
Walker came to compete, and so did freshman Christyn Williams. The duo were critical in UConn’s 80-73 win over Louisville that punched the Huskies’ ticket to the Final Four for the 12th consecutive season. Walker and Williams combined for 29 points and 19 rebounds, showing up when their team needed them most and making UConn an even bigger threat heading into the Final Four.
“[Katie Lou Samuelson] not being able to play in the conference tournament really, really helped them,” Auriemma said. “It helped with Megan realizing she had to do more. All along, we’ve been trying to get her to do more and do more and do more or trying to be more confident, be more aggressive. Christyn — you know, when you come from high school and you’re the best player in the country supposedly, and you have the ball all the time, and then you come here, and you’re [only] going to have it some of the time, it’s a foreign, foreign world that you’re entering. It takes awhile to get used to that, to find your place where you fit in. I think, as the season wore on, she did. She found her place, and she’s starting to play now like the player I saw in high school.”
It all started with Walker, whose 3-point shooting set the tone for the Huskies early. She went 3-for-3 from behind the arc in the first quarter, and hit a fourth 3 early in the second. The sophomore said she knew Louisville would be focused on UConn’s leading scorer, Napheesa Collier, and that she would be expected to capitalize on that.
With the Cardinals focused on Collier, Walker was able to get a good number of open looks. Her early scoring gave Samuelson time to find her rhythm, and the senior would go on to score 29 points and knock down seven 3s. Walker didn’t have as much success in the second half, but what she did in the first quarter was enough to make Louisville give her more attention. She finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds for her sixth double-double of the season.
“[Samuelson] made some big shots, but I’ve got to give credit to Megan Walker,” Louisville coach Jeff Walz said. “Megan Walker was the difference in the first half. You know, at times you’ve got to roll the dice a little bit, and I thought we did a really good job on Napheesa. But we backed off of Walker at times to help on Collier, and she knocked down shots. I thought she was the difference for them. And I know it was in the first half, but she really kept them going and gave them a bounce.”
Walker was exactly what the Huskies needed at the beginning of the game, and then it was Samuelson’s time to shine. She took over for UConn, looking unstoppable just two days after only scoring six points against UCLA in the Sweet 16. But then, with three minutes left in the third, the senior was called for her fourth foul, and Auriemma was forced to send her to the bench.
The Huskies would need someone to make up for Samuelson’s scoring until she could come back in, and Williams took it upon herself to do just that. She had done it before, leading UConn to a win over Notre Dame behind her 28-point performance earlier in the season, and she had proved big stages didn’t scare her. So when UConn came back onto the court at the start of the fourth quarter, Williams took things into her own hands.
“It was kind of like when she wasn’t playing in the conference tournament,” Williams said. “Somebody had to step up and play her role. So I just took what the defense gave me, and offensively, it was there. I was just flowing. So it happened.”
The freshman scored UConn’s first seven points in the fourth and pulled down critical offensive rebounds while Louisville’s Asia Durr did her best to cut into the Huskies’ lead. And after Samuelson returned for the final minutes of the game, Williams continued to make big plays. In the final seconds, she reached out and stole a pass that effectively ended any chances Louisville had of coming back for the win.
The growth of Walker and Williams this season, but especially the past two months, will be a big part of how far UConn advances in the tournament.
“[The two of them] have just made us a completely different team than the team that played Louisville the very first time,” Auriemma said.
Kelli Stacy can be reached at kstacy@courant.com.
