As painful as it may have been for them at the time, perhaps the best thing that could have happened to the members of the UConn women's basketball team is suffering through the events of Feb. 2 in Jamaica, N.Y.

The normally up-tempo, high-octane UConn offense was reduced to a standstill in the first half by an athletic and aggressive St. John's team. When the Huskies returned to campus, there were some issues to be addressed.

Neither the coaches nor the players were ready to place all the blame on not having the services of an ill Stefanie Dolson. There was a way the Huskies were going about their business that would catch up to them if the situation was not addressed.


"I really believe when you yourself struggle like that as an individual or see yourself struggle as a team, you get a little wake-up call," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "It is hard to find instances on our team when we are trying to find a lot of fault because you win so many games so when you play as uncharacteristically as we did on that Saturday and allowed St. John's the kind of dictate the game, I think coaches and players had a real difficult time with that. We came back rested, spent some time on things we thought would make us better."

In the last two games all the Huskies have done is score 62 first-half points against Marquette and 52 more in the first half against DePaul.

Let's be honest, the style of play had something to do with the gaudy statistics as neither the Golden Eagles nor Blue Demons made an attempt to limit UConn's offensive possessions by milking the shot clock and they were unable to keep UConn from getting out in transition.

Obviously the talent and resistance level will be increased when the Huskies face Baylor a week from today and Notre Dame in the regular-season finale on Mar. 4 but it is pretty clear that UConn is in a good frame of mind right now.


"I think we always have a focus on the flow of our offense, we don't want to stand around too much," said UConn junior guard Bria Hartley. "We want to get a good mixture of shots. Stef (Dolson) is a great post presence and you have people on the outside like me, Kaleena (Mosqueda-Lewis), Caroline (Doty) and Kelly (Faris) who can hit 3-point shots so I think we can get a good mixture of shots because it is hard for teams to defend that because you don't really know where the shots are going to come from."