Can Geno Auriemma fix UConn's problems before March Madness?

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be a glaring reason to sound the alarm about UConn women’s basketball.

The Huskies are 11-2 and ranked seventh in the latest AP Top 25 Poll and still look like contenders for the national championship because of two big reasons: Paige Bueckers and Sarah Strong.

Bueckers is in what seemingly looks like a three-horse race for the National Player of the Year award, currently running alongside Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and USC’s Juju Watkins, with players like LSU’s Aneesah Morrow, TCU’s Hailey Van Lith and Florida State’s Ta’Niya Latson trailing behind the front-running trio. Bueckers ranks second nationally in offensive win shares (2.4) and ninth in field goals made per game (8.2).

Strong, meanwhile, seems to be the best freshman in the country and someone who will contend for a spot on the All-American team, showing everyone why she was the highly coveted No. 1 recruit in the country. She’s ninth nationally in shooting percentage inside the arc (72.3), seventh in PER (42.4) and ninth in defensive win shares (1.0).

UConn has been celebrated this year for the play of Bueckers and Strong, and for the accomplishments of Geno Auriemma, who has now won more games than any other NCAA Division I men’s or women’s basketball coach.

But the Huskies do have problems. And if UConn aims to make a return to the Final Four in Tampa, Florida, they must be fixed.

The Huskies are atrocious at 3-point defense and rebounding, two things that teams typically need to be at least decent at to go far in the NCAA Tournament. Pick any metric and look at Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks from last season – they were among the best in any stat associated with rebounding and defending the deep ball.

UConn this season grabs a putrid 10.1 offensive rebounds per game, which ranks 254th nationally, while allowing a mediocre defensive rebounding rate of 68.7 percent to its opponents. The Huskies also let their opponents make 32.8 percent of their shots from 3-point land, which ranks 261st nationally. A year ago, when UConn made the Final Four and was one polarizing call away from appearing in the title game, it ranked in the top 40 in both 3-point defense and defensive rebounds allowed. This season, UConn isn’t good at either, much less elite.

In their loss to USC, the Huskies got outrebounded and allowed the Trojans to shoot a season-best 56.3 percent from behind the arc. In its loss to Notre Dame, UConn was again outrebounded and let the Irish shoot their second-best mark from 3-point land this season, 55.6 percent.

Notre Dame and USC – and teams like them – are the ones likely to be in Auriemma’s way as he chases a (what has proven to be elusive) 12th national championship. Without improvement on defense and the boards, the results will probably be the same.

Another concern for the Huskies is the absence of a consistent third scoring option. Azzi Fudd’s status remains erratic and unreliable. Fudd has only played in seven games this season. She has, however, shown the flashes of greatness that made her the No. 1 overall recruit in the 2021 class, like when she poured in 18 points apiece in wins over both Louisville and Ole Miss.

But Fudd didn’t appear in UConn’s three biggest games this season: a win over North Carolina and those losses to Notre Dame and USC. She isn’t totally healthy and, unfortunately, might never be this season. If UConn can get Fudd for 20 minutes per game in the NCAA Tournament, that should be considered as a massive luxury.

In the meantime, the Huskies need someone else to prove their reliability as a scorer. Ashlynn Shade has shown it in spurts, and folks who paid attention to the Ivy League know that Kaitlyn Chen is capable of being an elite scoring option. In three seasons with the Tigers, Chen scored 15 points or more in 43 games, including a 22-point performance in a 2023 NCAA Tournament win over N.C. State. In her short stint at UConn so far, she has yet to top 14 points in a single game.

The good news for the Huskies is that they’re about to have a bunch of get-right games as Big East play begins. The league is, put nicely, not very good this season. ESPN’s Charlie Creme projects that just two Big East teams – UConn and Creighton – will make the NCAA Tournament this season. The only other Big East team aside from the Huskies and Bluejays in the NET top 50 this season is St. John’s.

Smashed into UConn’s Big East slate is a pair of challenges with SEC teams, Tennessee and South Carolina. The Huskies should be riding an 11-game win streak by the time they travel to Knoxville for a Feb. 6 matchup with Kim Caldwell’s new-look Volunteers – a game where UConn’s 3-point defense and rebounding will surely be put to the test. Tennessee leads the nation in 3-pointers made (149) and attempted (452), and they’re also first nationally in offensive rebounds per game (21.7), and second in defensive rebounding rate (53.3). This run-and-gun style of play – with an emphasis on defense and putting up as many 3-pointers as possible – has the Vols undefeated so far in Caldwell’s first season at the helm.

The rekindling of the UConn-Tennessee rivalry this year will either expose the Huskies’ worst flaws or prove that they can overcome them.

And it will tell us whether Auriemma can work his mid-season coaching magic at least one more time as he approaches his 71st birthday.