Geno Auriemma spoke about last night’s defeat to Iowa.
Geno Auriemma, the UConn Huskies coach, has reflected on his team’s 71-79 loss to Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes on Friday.
For the first half of the Final Four semifinal, it looked like UConn would be heading to the national championship game against South Carolina.
Clark was outstandingly covered by a Huskies defense led by Nika Muhl, with the Hawkeyes star not scoring a 3-pointer until the second half. Iowa, though, eventually prevailed narrowly, with Clark scoring 21 points.
“We shot four free throws tonight, in a game that was played like that. So either Iowa plays absolutely zero defense, which isn’t true, or we shot four free throws. We’re not aggressive enough, I guess, getting to the rim.”
He also admitted that during the second half, Nika Muhl didn’t receive enough help from her teammates to cover a player of Caitlin Clark’s caliber.
Nonetheless, Auriemma’s UConn Huskies were only two points from winning the game. Barring an offensive foul by Aaliyah Edwards and losing possession after a failed Iowa free throw in the closing seconds, they might have done it.
UConn’s Geno Auriemma on foul call on Aaliyah Edwards late on
With 10 seconds left, UConn had the opportunity to take the lead. A pass by Caitlin Clark to teammate Hannah Stuelke in a scoring position led to a turnover when Stuelke attempted to pass to Sydney Affolter outside the rim.
However, when the Huskies seemed poised to take the lead, Aaliyah Edwards was called on a foul on Gabbie Marshall.
The somewhat controversial call allowed Iowa to recover possession despite missing the free throw associated with it. Geno Auriemma said about it in the aftermath of the game:
“I mean, there’s probably an illegal screen call that you could make on every single possession, I just know there were three or four of them called on us and I don’t think there were any called on them. So I guess we just gotta get better on not setting illegal screens.”
Was the call an unfair one?
