Selection Monday was not the best time UConn senior guard Kelly Faris has ever experienced.

The lingering memories of the nightmarish end to the Big East tournament final six days ago were still fresh in her head and then more misfortune struck as she caught a flu bug from roommate Heather Buck forcing her to miss a rare practice. Then while her teammates were gathered together to watch the unveiling of the NCAA tournament bracket, Faris was alone in her apartment loaded up on cough medicine.

"My whole team is out here watching the Selection (Show) and I was by myself in my room isolated so nobody else would get sick but there are some things that you can't control and it is what it is," Faris said. "I was pretty much out of it and I was just watching so I didn't have a reaction."

What Faris did have a reaction to was the nightmarish final offensive possession in the Big East final.

UConn was tied with Notre Dame and had a chance to win the game. Faris had the ball in her hands three times but she missed a shot and then threw a pair of passes that were off the mark. As a result of the chaos which ensued, Skylar Diggins was able to intercept a Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis pass and fed Natalie Achonwa for the game-winning basket.

"Any loss sucks especially the way it went down and the way we lost and our last chance at a Big East championship so that was a really disappointing  game especially the way we lost and the fact I got the ball and I didn't convert the way I needed to," Faris said. "A lot of things could have been different in the game but in the end you always try to learn something from it, we try to take it as a positive going into it thinking that had we won we would have pushed all of these things aside that would have come to hurt us later on."

Faris and her teammates held a players' only meeting and the result has been a renewed focus in practice.

"We just have to lean on each other," Faris said. "We have to hold ourselves accountable. If you need to say something to somebody say it. If I am going too fast either one of the coaches or somebody has to say it and I need to hear it."