SPOKANE, Wash. — Jana El Alfy and Azzi Fudd are roommates in Spokane and Saturday morning, when they woke up, they talked about the upcoming NCAA Tournament game against Oklahoma.
“The whole morning, I’m like, ‘Jana, it’s going to be a great day for you. Jana, I can’t wait, I’m so excited,’” Fudd said. “I knew she was ready to step up.”
The assignment for El Alfy, UConn’s 6-foot-5 starting center, and her fellow post players, Ice Brady and freshman Sarah Strong, was to limit Oklahoma’s 6-4 center Raegan Beers, who came into the Spokane 4 Regional semifinal averaging 17.9 points and 9.3 rebounds.
Saturday’s game was physical and the shots didn’t fall until the second half for UConn, but the defense, with a few blips in the second quarter, stayed strong, especially in the post. Beers was held to 10 points, shooting 3 for 11, and had 10 rebounds, and UConn outrebounded the second-leading rebounding team in the country en route to an 82-59 victory over Oklahoma at Spokane Arena.
UConn will play regional No. 1 seed USC, without JuJu Watkins, for a spot in the Final Four on Monday night. The Trojans outlasted No. 5 Kansas State in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader.
The second-seeded Huskies also held No. 3 Oklahoma, which had averaged 85.4 points per game, to its lowest scoring output of the season, a point made on the whiteboard in the UConn locker room after the game.
“We tried to mix it up and not be the same thing all the time,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “We have Jana and her banging around in there, then Ice a little bit differently, then Sarah a little differently than that. We were kind of going back and forth – are we OK giving up some 3s to help on (Beers)?
“All of it was effort. I thought the referees were great, sometimes they don’t let you do some of the things you want to do but they let both teams just play. It has to come together like that.”
The defense held even when UConn was struggling to score in the second quarter, although there were some lapses. Payton Verhulst scored 13 of her 16 points in the second quarter and Oklahoma led 36-32 at halftime.
“I came in the locker room at halftime, and I thought long and hard and I came up with a strategy and I said, ‘You know, we should guard No. 12 (Verhulst),’” Auriemma said. ‘We should put a hand up and guard No. 12. Paige, she stuck one right in your face and you didn’t have your hand up. Maybe you think you’re the only good player in America but there’s other guys that can make shots too.’
“I think we got a little lazy or distracted and it happens when you’re not making shots. When you’re making shots, you’re pumped up, you’re fired up, let’s blow them out, let’s shut them down. The second half, we concentrated really, really hard on Payton, she’s a really good shooter.”
Verhulst did not score again until late in the game when it was out of reach for Oklahoma.
“We needed to make some adjustments in the second half,” Azzi Fudd said. “It wasn’t bad in the first half. We had some mental lapses. Some rotations that we missed, sometimes we should have helped inside, that we missed.
“But I thought we did a great job and our bigs did a great job guarding Raegan Beers.”
UConn outrebounded Oklahoma, 43-41. The Sooners had had an NCAA Tournament record 72 rebounds in their first game against Florida Gulf Coast and 64 against Iowa in the second tournament game.
El Alfy, playing in her first NCAA Tournament, had nine rebounds. Strong had a double-double (11 points, 11 rebounds).
“It was very physical,” El Alfy said. “I was mainly focusing on defense and trying to be physical as much as I can. Everybody helped, too, the guards helped.”
Said Fudd: “I’m super proud of Jana, Sarah, Ice, they made it hard for all the bigs. The point of emphasis was they get no easy looks. Make it hard, battle them, they’re going to be physical, so make sure you’re physical.”
