Doggydaddy's Den: Doggy's Doghouse 3/7/2023

GO UCONN!!!!!

Finally, I get a little break. Three pregame reports and three daily blogs with post game reports is a little tiring. Thankfully with the three teams UConn played being opponents that the Huskies already played so I have a basic shell to work with. But still, I'm an old man and it kept me up late every night. Hey, who am I kidding. I love writting about UConn and this team? They have given me so much pleasure this season.

It's seriously hard to believe that Paige Bueckers tore her ACL in early August at a summer workout. And then just before the season starts, Ice Brady dislocates her knee cap. Both were out for the season in what would be a devastating blow to any team.

This team has gone through even more as the season progressed. Ducharme missed the first game and played only 4 minutes the second game. Then Juhasz breaks a finger and misses a bunch of games. They beat NC State, Duke and Iowa without Dorka, but they lost to Notre Dame but more importantly, they lost Fudd for a ton of games with a knee injury. At this point this season was looking worse than last year when Griffin was out with her back surgery and Bueckers was out with her knee injury. That was hard to believe and we can only imagine how tough this was on the UConn players and coaching staff.

They barely beat Princeton with unknown Ina Bettencourt hitting 3-4 free throw to cement the victory. But as hard as it was to believe at the time, Muhl had to miss the next game at Maryland. So the hero at Princeton, Bettencourt had to start at point guard. And they were missing Fudd. And they were missing Juhasz. It was just too much to overcome and the Huskies had another loss.

Dorka came back and UConn went on a 14 game winning streak. But during that streak, Ducharme missed several games with a concussion. Patterson also missed a few games with a concussion. And then Edwards hurt her leg trying to save a ball from going out of bounds and UConn had to postpone the game against DePaul due to lack of available players.

This is all so hard to believe. But it happened. Wait, there's more.

Fudd was finally back in the next game against St. John's and UConn absolutely destroyed St. John's even missing both Ducharme and Patterson.

So of course, in the next game against Georgetown, a closer than expected 15 point win, Fudd gets hit in the knee and she is back on the bench. For the rest of the regular season.

The 5 starters, Edwards, Juhasz, Lou, Griffin and Muhl were called on to play crazy minutes until some players could come back. Geno did not trust time to the bench so that was just the way it had to be.

They beat Tennessee by 17, and then Villanova in a huge conference match up. They put up a great effort against No. 1 South Carolina, still without Ducharme and Fudd. But it all caught up with them against Marquette, losing to the Golden Eagles 59-51 breaking their streak for not losing two games in a row. It was followed by three poorly played wins. I got tired of typing "a win is a win". And one more time, the team just didn't have it. They lost to St. John's even with Ducharme's return. They looked tired and for the first time in a long while, they looked defeated.

They squeaked out a win against DePaul and played poorly in a win over a weak Xavier team to finish the regular season with enough wins to take the regular season Big East championship.

So, what would happen in the Big East tournament? Well, for one thing, Fudd was back. She was clearly rusty and not in game shape, but she was back and the team played off of that. This was the first time in a long time (maybe all year?) they had ten available players.

They hammered Georgetown, slapped around Marquette (revenge is sweet) and was on the way to blowing out Villanove before letting the air out of the ball for an esy win.

Every loss this season, Fudd was out injured except for the Notre Dame loss and that was the game she was injured in the first half. Think she makes a difference?

After typing all this, it's still have to believe what happened all season with injuries and where they are now. Geno called it a Shakesperian play. The ups and downs were a different act.

Hopefully I didn't mess up the timeing of everyething too much. However, the past is the past. The only thing the losses did was maybe lower UConn's seeding. I have a section later in the blog talking about where they should be seeded. I do have an opinion.

But the future is now and God willing, they stay healthy for six more games. They have a really good shot at the final four again and if Fudd can regain her form with 10 days of practice and 4 NCAA tournament games, I like the Huskies chances of winning the last two games of the season.

I'll finish this blog and take some time off. Or not.

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Great Geno Scrum Interview

I love his confidence in his team. He believes they can get to the final game. So do I.

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Straight from the Dog

UConn has to be the most well known college basketball team ever.

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Top teams have now finished their regular season and conference tournaments. We have until Selection Sunday to debate who should be the Top seeds. And debate it we will!!

South Carolina is clearly the No. 1 overall seed. I suppose I could handle if Indiana was another Number 1 seed. That leaves two No. 1 spots left. Here is a great chart with info on the 5 teams battling for those spots.

It's clear to me from these numbers that UConn deserves one of those No. 1 seeds. They have the best NET, second best overall record, most NET top 25 wins, most Quad 1 wins, second most Quad 2 wins, second most Quar 3 wins and and because of their SOS they have fewest games against Quad 4 teams. They are tied for second best record over the last 10 games.

I would bet if you added Indiana to this chart, UConn would actually be the No. 2 overall seed.

So, forget SECreme. Let's debate among ourselves. Selection Sunday is only days away!

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