Paige Bueckers scored 24 points as No. 3 UConn won its fifth straight Big East tournament championship by rolling past No. 22 Creighton 70-50 on Monday in Uncasville, Conn.
Sarah Strong bundled 13 points with 11 rebounds, six steals, four assists and three blocks for the top-seeded Huskies (31-3), who have won the Big East tournament title each year since rejoining the league after a seven-season stint in the American Athletic Conference.
UConn also got 13 points from Azzi Fudd and seven apiece from KK Arnold and Kaitlyn Chen. Bueckers added eight rebounds, three assists, two blocks and two steals.
“The road to these tournaments… looks easy because sometimes we have a tendency to make it look easier than it really is,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “But the amount of work that goes into what we try to do and how we do it, that’s kind of the reward that you get is being able to play in this game and win a game like this.”
Lauren Jensen netted 13 points and grabbed seven rebounds to pace the second-seeded Bluejays (26-6), who never led and fell to 0-2 in Big East tournament championships. Morgan Maly chipped in 12 points, while Molly Mogensen and Mallory Brake each scored seven.
The Huskies seized control from the jump, building an 11-0 lead four minutes into the game. Jensen’s transition steal and layup got Creighton on the board with 4:30 left in the first quarter, prompting a 7-0 run, but UConn steadied itself and promptly pulled away again.
Bueckers scored the game’s next eight points to replenish the Huskies’ double-digit lead, and two 3-pointers from Fudd helped UConn build a 27-11 advantage after one.
The margin reached 20 on another Buckers triple that made it 35-15 before Arnold’s trey gave the Huskies a 38-17 cushion with 2:32 to play in the second quarter. The Bluejays went 0-for-8 from 3-point range until Jensen connected late in the second to help Creighton close within 40-22 at the break.
UConn opened the second half with seven straight points to push its lead to 25 and never let the Bluejays get within 14 the rest of the way.
The Huskies outshot Creighton 44.4 percent to 35.8 percent and flipped 19 Bluejays turnovers into 16 points. Creighton had 22 points off 17 UConn turnovers but shot just 6-of-23 (26.1 percent) from 3-point range.
“We made plenty of mistakes tonight,” stated Creighton coach Jim Flanery. “I told the team, our margin for error is really small when you play those guys… A lot of it was how good (UConn was) in the first quarter, but we also didn’t communicate and had a couple of softer turnovers that kind of put the game in a really difficult spot right away.”
–Field Level Media
