CONNECTICUT — Winning the last three NCAA Championships and being ranked first in the country again, UConn was set to play Temple in a game where Temple winning would’ve been a major upset. Temple came out to play, and didn’t necessarily play bad, but it’s hard to beat a team that just doesn’t lose very often.
Only two players, Alliya Butts and Khadijah Berger, were able to achieve double digit points, with 12 and 11 respectively. All the ways that Temple usually wins games were neutralized as UConn had more steals, rebounds, assists, blocks, and free-throws, and less turnovers. It was just a game against a team that nobody has been able to even lose within double digits this season, and Temple couldn’t do it either.
In the first quarter, UConn went on a 24-0 run for about seven minutes, and ended the quarter with a 22 point advantage over Temple at 32-10. The run basically came about by UConn making the shots that Temple was missing.
At the start of the second quarter, Temple and UConn were scoring on each other back and forth, and Temple was starting to trim the lead. However, after about five minutes in the quarter, UConn went on a 13-0 run to bring the lead up to 36 and leave the halftime score as 57-21. At the end of the first half, Feyonda Fitzgerald lead all Temple scorers with seven points, but two players from UConn (Breanna Stewart and Katie Lou Samuelson) had already scored 19 and 16 points, respectively. UConn had been controlling the game for the entire half, and had outplayed Temple in every stat as a team.
The third quarter was more of the same with UConn going on another big run to increase their already massive lead even more. They ended the quarter leading by 47 points, ahead 35-82.
And in the fourth quarter, just as had been the case all game, UConn increased the lead even more and just went on to win the game by 55 points. UConn completely controlled the game from start to finish, and there was nothing that Temple, much like every other team that they’ve played this year, could say about it. This is a loss that Temple shouldn’t feel too bad about, especially since UConn actually defeated a team 98-18 this year. They’re just not a regular team.
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