The second-largest crowd ever to grace the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome for a women’s basketball matchup watched Thursday night as the Bulls became just the latest victim in a now 85-game winning-streak for the University of Connecticut Huskies, this as UConn emerged victorious on the road with an 80-54 victory. South Florida struggled to match the Huskies’ offensive tempo right from the get-go, failing to score a single basket until nearly seven minutes had melted off the first-half clock (one-of-17 for that period of time). Yet, even from that point, the Bulls never proved a threat, with South Florida failing to come within more than 14 points of its opponent for the remainder of the game. The foul line ultimately proved about the only area where Jose Fernandez’s squad found success against a stifling Connecticut defense, as the Bulls scoried exactly half of its total points in the loss – 27 – on free throw attempts. Outside of that, though, the Bulls demonstrated it was all-too-ineffective in shutting down a well-disciplined Huskies squad, with five UConn players reaching double figures for the contest – including freshman Stefanie Dolson, who earned a career-high 16 points on six-of-eight shooting from the floor. Maya Moore –22 points short of surpassing Tina Charles for the all-time career scoring record at Connecticut – strangely was not one of them, with the senior unusually out-of-rhythm in her shooting (one-of-eight, with 11 of her 14 points in the win coming on foul shots), and leaving head coach Geno Auriemma commenting afterward that he was “shocked” by the inability of Moore to take control of Thursday’s victory. Still, UConn’s bench play more than made up for Moore’s lack of production, with freshman Bria Hartley posting 13 points and sophomore Kelly Faris, who ended up four-of-six shooting with six rebounds. That, matched up with South Florida’s slow start on offense (said Fernandez after the game, “You can’t come out of the gate as poorly as we did. We dug ourselves a big hole.”), made for an easy win for the Huskies against its first Big East opponent of the 2010 season. Andrea Smith was one of the few bright spots for the now 5-4 Bulls, hitting seven-of-24 for 20 points in 40 minutes of play, along with Andrell Smith, who hit 50 percent from the floor (six-of-12) to finish with 15 points. Still, it is clear South Florida will have to find a more balanced attack on both sides of the ball during an eight-day break before taking on North Florida at home on December 12. From there, the Bulls will look to return to its winning ways once again in against the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Wake Forest at the Sun Dome before traveling to Las Vegas, Nevada to compete in the Basketball Travelers Classic.
What follows is a collection of images produced by Envision Sports Media’s Jason Roberts during Thursday night contest. As usual, all items included within this post remain the sole property of Jason and Envision Sports Media and may not be reproduced without explicit permission, obtainable by emailing jason@envisionsportsmedia.com.
Envision Sports Media was excited to see an old friend of ours, John Blackwell, taking over for us on this week’s Big East Conference Weekly Coaches Teleconference, and is proud to feature below the responses provided to questions asked by Blackwell of West Virginia’s Bill Stewart. Also included in this week’s posting, as usual, are highlights of some of the other coaches involved in Monday’s teleconference, including Louisville’s Charlie Strong, Connecticut’s Randy Edsall and, of course, South Florida’s Skip Holtz.
