HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT – DECEMBER 15: Sarah Strong #21 of the Connecticut Huskies is defended by Ariel Jenkins #21 of the Georgetown Hoyas during the first half of an NCAA women’s basketball game at the XL Center on December 15, 2024 in Hartford, Connecticut. (Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images)
UConn has a challenging week ahead with games against two of the top players in the country.
The fourth-ranked Huskies face Audi Crooks and Iowa State on Tuesday in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase and then No. 7 USC and phenomenal sophomore JuJu Watkins on Saturday.
“Every team poses a different problem. Iowa State, everybody knows what their greatest strength is and they are very good at playing through that strength,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said about Crooks. "How we prepare for them will probably have to be different from how we prepare for the USC game. Two different players, two different teams that have a lot of attention paid to them.”
Iowa State has had a rough start to the season. The Cyclones started eighth in the preseason poll before falling out Monday. They’ve lost to Northern Iowa, South Carolina and rival Iowa.
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Crooks, a 6-foot-3 sophomore, is averaging 21.6 points and 8.1 rebounds this season.
“She is young, this is her second year. It hasn’t taken her long to get acclimated to college basketball," Auriemma said. “When you have what she has, it is something that very few people in the country have so she is a difference maker.”
The Huskies plan on making things difficult for Crooks.
Dog House
“It is not one person who is guarding her, it is all five people on the court,” Huskies star guard Paige Bueckers said. “Whoever steps in off the bench will have a great game plan, I know we will have a great scout. It is no one person’s responsibility, it is on everybody to help out and make things harder for her and make things harder for the guards to enter it into her.”
Saturday’s game against USC is a rematch of last season’s Elite Eight game that the Huskies won 80-73. The Trojans still have Watkins, who is third in the country in scoring at 24.7 points a game. Coach Lindsay Gottlieb has added pieces around her with transfers Kiki Iriafen (Stanford) and Talia von Oelhoffen (Oregon State).
The seventh-ranked Trojans’ lone loss this season came at home to Notre Dame before Thanksgiving. The Irish handed the Huskies their only defeat of the season so far last Thursday.
Ranked Bears
Cal entered the poll for the first time since 2019, coming in at No. 24. The Bears are 12-1 with the lone loss coming against No. 15 Michigan State. Cal beat rival Stanford by 20 points last Friday, snapping a 12-game losing streak in the series. The win was the third largest in the series history and the most since a win during the 1981-82 season.
The Bears were 17-13 last season, the first winning season under coach Charmin Smith who took over the program in 2019. They made the WNIT and lost in the second round.
“We talked about last year’s goal was postseason play and I wish I had said NCAA Tournament,” Smith said. “The team was all bought in on making the postseason. Now the NCAA Tournament is the goal. Everyone is locked on that.”
NET ratings
The NCAA’s weekly NET rankings — one of the tools that the selection committee uses for the NCAA Tournament bracket — has South Carolina still as the top choice Texas and Kansas State the top three. UCLA which is No. 1 in the AP poll is fifth. Vanderbilt, which is just outside of the Top 25 is ninth.
Freelance writer Jim Fuller contributed to this story.
