When Kia Nurse and Gabby Williams were freshmen, the Huskies played six games at the XL Center as they did in each of their four seasons. However, one major change has been the number of people who have turned out for this year's games in Hartford.

With a crowd of 13,110 (it actually looked like more than that were in attendance), UConn averaged 12,458 fans in its six games in Hartford this season. As a point of reference, the Huskies only had one home game to draw more than that in the previous three seasons.

"I think it has been crazy how good attendance has been for XL games and how great our fans have been every single game," UConn junior guard/forward Katie Lou Samuelson said. "It seems like every game there has been a little more each time so we want to make sure we go out and play as hard as we can especially today being the last XL game, we wanted to play as hard as we could."

Mission accomplished.

UConn rolled to the 106-45 win over Temple enabling seniors Kia Nurse and Gabby Williams to finish their careers 24-0 at the XL Center.  Nurse had 16 points and Williams 10 marking the 10th time they both scored in double figures at the XL Center. Williams finished with 298 career points in Hartford and Nurse has 274 as she missed last season's game against Temple.

It was also worth noting that UConn matched a season high with 39 bench points, something that was also accomplished in the first game against Temple.

UConn matched its season high with 39 bench points which was also accomplished in an earlier win over Temple. Azura'  Stevens had 11 points, Megan Walker 10 while Batouly Camara had her best scoring game of the season with eight points and Kyla Irwin chipped in with seven points.

"I thought this was one of Z (Stevens) better games, she got a lot of things accomplished today and same thing with that second group," Auriemma said. "This is one of the few times when we really played well as a unit with that second group. It is good that kids come to practice every day, they work really hard and you want them have some confidence, have some fun playing the game and it looked like they were having some fun at the end of the game."

The UConn coaches have been working with Stevens to keep her closer to the basket which is something she did for most of the time she was in there against the Owls.

"Credit to CD (UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey)," Stevens said. "We have been doing a lot of extra work with getting some moves around the basket, that has helped me a lot and just my teammates being patient with me, continuing to get me the ball because I have not been as consistent down there, they still trust me and fed me the ball."


It was a tough afternoon for Atkinson, the former Career High star who came into the game as the leading scorer in the AAC. Atkinson was 2 for 12 from the floor as she had five points and two rebounds as Williams made her work for everything.

"She just has a motor that doesn't stop," Williams said of Atkinson. "She is a little undersized but she is big, strong, athletic, she is quick and has a really aggressive mindset and that makes her dangerous."

UConn hits the road to face Tulane and SMU before returning home to meet South Florida in the final regular season game for Nurse and Williams. By that time the Huskies figure to have wrapped up their fifth straight AAC regular-season title.

There could be an interested spectator at that game as Ezi Magbegor, a 6-foot-4 forward from Australia who was the rookie of the year in National Women's Basketball League, is expected to visit UConn and be at the USF game.