Women’s Notebook: Azzi Fudd’s Fine Form and N.C. State’s Stumbles

I always look forward to Thanksgiving week’s basketball games and this year’s slate did not disappoint. Luckily for me, quality time in my family includes watching plenty of women’s hoops, and we were all locked in on the holiday tournaments, which included unexpected matchups, breakout performances and buzzer beaters. Here’s what stood out from the week:   

• UConn is back. It’s crazy to say that about a team coming off a Final Four, but those are the kind of expectations Geno Auriemma has created in Storrs. It’s been eight years since the Huskies won a national title and now they look poised to do it again. I see UConn, Notre Dame and UCLA as the biggest title contenders right now, though a lot can happen between November and March. UConn has all the pieces, particularly now that Azzi Fudd is back in action. After missing over a year with an ACL and meniscus injury, Fudd made her season debut on November 20, the same night that Auriemma got his record-setting win. Auriemma made it clear that he will be easing Fudd back into action, but in UConn’s 73-60 win over No. 18 Ole Miss on Wednesday, she started to look like herself. Fudd had 18 points on 8 of 11 shooting. She’s a big piece to the UConn puzzle and if this team wants to win the program’s 12th title, they will need more games like that from Fudd. 

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• USC had a nice bounce-back win after falling to Notre Dame on Saturday. Seton Hall isn’t exactly top-notch competition, but it’s the way that USC secured the win that’s important. Against Notre Dame, JuJu Watkins finished with 24 points, but the Trojans struggled to find offense elsewhere. Against Seton Hall they had balance with four double-digit scorers, including Avery Howell, who had 14 off the bench. Against Notre Dame, USC didn’t record a single bench point. 
• Notre Dame’s high after beating USC didn’t last long because TCU came in and spoiled things with a 76-68 upset on Friday. The Horned Frogs have something special with Hailey Van Lith and Sedona Prince, who dismantled the Notre Dame defense together. After a challenging year at LSU, Van Lith looks like a brand new player. She still has the offensive creativity she displayed at Louisville, plus a newfound ability to distribute. Van Lith read the defense and made all the right plays, while only committing one turnover. She finished with 21 points and seven assists. Against Notre Dame’s pesky defense, that’s near-impossible for a guard to do. The Irish also didn’t have an answer for Prince in the post. She’s a unique big that can stretch the floor and pass out of the high post, which made it difficult for the Irish guards to wreak their usual havoc. The 6-7 Prince finished with one of the most impressive stat lines of the week, with 20 points, 20 rebounds, eight blocks and four assists. 

• Despite the loss, I still think Notre Dame is one of the best teams in college basketball. They have the best backcourt in the country, but the TCU loss proved that freshman Kate Koval isn’t quite ready to be a primary big. She finished with zero points (0 of 9 shooting), and ended up fouling out. The return of injured players Liza Karlen and Maddy Westbeld will be crucial for this team’s long term success, and so will the development of Koval.

• Kim Mulkey likes to ease her teams into action, which often makes it hard to judge just how good they are. That’s why it was good to see No. 7 LSU play its first ranked opponent, No. 20 NC State, this week. After watching the Tigers sneak out a one-point win against Washington on Monday, I wasn’t sure what to expect against the Wolfpack. But in winning 82-65, LSU showed poise behind its big three: Mikaylah Williams (24 points), Aneesah Morrow (20 points and 15 rebounds) and Flau’jae Johnson (16 points). It’s no surprise that the trio is doing all the heavy lifting right now. They played together last season, while many of the remaining players in Mulkey’s rotation are new and adjusting to their roles. I’m especially watching guard Kailyn Gilbert, an Arizona transfer who can score in multiple ways, and Jersey Wolfenbarger, 6-foot-5 transfer from Arkansas with superstar potential. 

• N.C. State’s loss to LSU was its third of the season. After last season’s Final Four, the Wolfpack came into the year with high expectations and so far those aren’t being met. N.C. State is missing a post presence after the graduation of River Baldwin and Mimi Collins. The Wolfpack brought in 6-foot-4 forward Caitlin Weimar, a transfer from Boston University who averaged 18.7 points and 10.6 rebounds per game, but an injury derailed her season before it even started. The Wolfpack have great guards, but it’s hard to see them having success without improving in the post. Even if Weimar returns, she might not be enough to turn things around. The Pack has three young bigs in Mallory Collier, Tilda Trygger and Lorena Awou. Someone is going to have to step up. 

• Kentucky does not have a post problem. Other teams, however, do have a problem with sophomore Clara Strack. She led her team to a 76-53 win over Illinois with 25 points, 15 rebounds and four assists. She and point guard Georgia Amoore both came to Kentucky with coach Kenny Brooks from Virginia Tech and their connection is clear. Amoore pushed back last season when people referred to Strack as “baby Liz Kitley,” but the comparison is apt and also not bad company for her to be in. Kitley was the piece that started Virginia Tech’s rise and she led the Hokies to their first Final Four with her smooth footwork and touch around the rim. Strack has a lot of the same skills, which bodes well for this Kentucky team.

• Every season South Dakota State sneaks up on people and pulls out an upset or two in the early going. At this point, it should be expected. The Jackrabbits started by upsetting Creighton and then lost by just four points to Duke before knocking off Oregon 75-70 on Tuesday. Head coach Aaron Johnston always puts together a difficult schedule — the Jackrabbits also play Texas this season — and it pays off. South Dakota State has been to 12 NCAA Tournaments since 2009. 

• Speaking of South Dakota State, there are a few mid-major players that I want to shout out. Transferring is part of basketball now and there’s nothing wrong with players leaving for better teams, more playing time, money or whatever reason. But there is also something to be said about finding a program that makes you happy and forgetting about the rest. South Dakota State’s Brooklyn Meyer is a great example of that. She probably could have transferred after her freshman year, but she stayed and made her mark on the South Dakota State program winning Summit League Player of the Year as a sophomore last season. The same can be said for senior Katie Dinnebier at Drake. The senior had 40 points against Iowa and then 39 against Iowa State in performances that are typical for her against top competition. Harvard senior Harmoni Turner is also one of the country’s best scoring guards and she’s actually getting some long-deserved hype this season. But even after other programs were ready to drop the bag for her (as she said on social media) after her freshman season, Turner stayed put. She’s making the most of it with a 41-point game against Boston College and a buzzer beater against Saint John’s already this season.

• Of course, sometimes transferring is the answer. That was the case for Payton Verhulst, who is blossoming in her second season at Oklahoma. The former five-star recruit struggled in a season and a half at Louisville before joining coach Jennie Baranczyk in Norman. She looks like a completely different, more confident player at Oklahoma, something that showed in 109-99 OT loss to Duke on Wednesday. Verhulst finished with 29 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists for a triple double. She also made a highlight-worthy three-pointer with two seconds left in regulation to force overtime. Oklahoma is a solid team with deep tournament potential and Verhulst is a big part of that. Fellow transfer Raegan Beers will also be crucial to whatever success the Sooners have this season. She’s averaging 19.7 points, 9.7 rebounds and shooting 72.2 percent from the field so far. 

• The Duke-Oklahoma game was easily the best matchup of the week and not just because it went to overtime. The contest also saw players on both teams at their best. No one shined quite as brightly as Duke’s Reigan Richardson, a player who deserves more attention. She was named MVP of the Ball Dawgs Classic thanks to her career high 35 points in the win over Oklahoma. Duke made 11 three-pointers in the win, with five coming from Richardson. She was huge in the NCAA Tournament for Duke last season as well, averaging 21 points in three games. 

• The last marquee game of the week actually ended up being pretty boring, because South Carolina was just too dominant. The No. 4 Gamecocks bounced back from their loss to UCLA with a monster 76-36 win over No. 15 Iowa State. The Cyclones scored just three points in the first quarter and nine in the first half as South Carolina went on a 32-0 run. Obviously one loss wasn’t going to derail South Carolina’s season, but the Gamecocks hadn’t had to respond to a loss in 43 games and the UCLA game was the sophomore class’ first loss in an SC uniform. All of that means there were questions about how this team would bounce back. They’ve been answered in a big way.