Dan Shaughnessy is still a weird piece of shit and we’re still here making wild predictions about UConn women’s basketball. Buckle your seatbelt and/or comb your weird 1970’s perm because it’s time for our annual preseason roundtable.
Check out our past WBB roundtables from 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. You can also read our men’s basketball roundtable here.
Record Prediction
Meghan: 35-2.
Russ: 34-3.
Tyler: 32-4 and another undefeated conference season.
Kevin: 34-3, AAC Tournament champions, but the Final Four run finally ends with a shock Elite Eight loss before The Reckoning begins with next year’s freshmen class.
Peter: All Wins.
Best Quality
Russ: The backcourt is better than any in the country and Crystal Dangerfield is the best player in the world who is shorter than me. If Christyn Williams builds on a great freshman year and Anna Makurat is as good as she looked (at times) in the first exhibition, then the team is gonna be fun as hell.
Kevin: The players are still better than most players, and they’ll only play a couple games at most where they don’t have the best player on the court.
Tyler: Crystal Dangerfield and Christyn Williams might be the best backcourt combination UConn has had in a decade (not gonna fact check this but you still may not at me). As long as both stay healthy, there isn’t a game on the schedule that the Huskies can’t win.
Meghan: Guard play. Crystal is supposedly back up to full speed after her hip surgery, and after spending the summer playing for Team USA in the FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series, Christyn Williams should be more than ready for prime time.
Peter: Guards.
Worst Quality
Peter: Not enough acrostics.
Meghan: As usual, it’s depth. With Westbrook’s waiver being denied (because the NCAA is a bunch of fascist monsters) and Camara out for the next couple months (probably?) with another knee injury, the team only has 9 scholarship players, which is not ideal especially when one of those scholarships belongs to Molly Bent.
Tyler: It’s depth, as always. The downside of Geno being one of the greatest basketball coaches of all-time is that after 30 years it’s kinda more fun to get three players, shit talk with Diana Taurasi on FaceTime and drink a gallon of red wine instead of methodically filling every need on the roster. We’ve seen in recent years how opponents have been able to capitalize on UConn’s flaws late in the Tournament — be it lack of rebounding, lack of strength, or lack of non-KLS outside shooting. When [redacted to not be cruel] is the first player off the bench, UConn is eminently beatable. Parity sucks.
Kevin: The frontcourt has major questions and not a ton of depth. Megan Walker’s really good, but then question mark?
Russ: There are certainly some questions in the frontcourt. ONO needs to take a step forward and Evelyn Adebayo needs to be effective immediately, but there’s nothing that makes me think that can’t happen. Megan Walker is the one sure thing and if she is an all-conference first-teamer, as predicted but the coaches, then the team will be just fine.
Team MVP
Kevin: Dangerfield. This is her team now, and she’s certainly talented enough to be the best player on a championship-caliber team.
Peter: Crystal Danger Mouse.
Russ: Crystal.
Tyler: Going Williams here. Of the four immensely talented stars, she seems to be the one who takes the least shit, and UConn needs to start playing with attitude again.
Meghan: Crystal is gonna drop so many fire dimes I cannot wait.
X Factor
Tyler: Nelson-Ododa is going to need to have an All-American season for UConn to have a shot at a ring. If she struggles with foul trouble and doesn’t make a big leap forward in her sophomore year, I don’t think UConn makes the Final Four.
Meghan: ONO. This team needs ONO to step up in a big way. They are going to be pretty light in the frontcourt, and they cannot afford for her to be as foul-prone as she was last year. She also spent the summer playing in the FIBA 3×3 series, and she appears stronger and much readier than last year, but a lot of this season hinges on whether she can bring it or not.
Kevin: Evelyn Adebayo. She put up some dope-ass numbers at a much lower level (insert AAC joke here), and if she can translate that into something approximating “an above average high-major player who gives you 15 efficient minutes a night and a few fouls” or better, that would solve a lot of problems.
Russ: The appeal for Evina Westbrook’s waiver. Here’s a nice reminder that all college athletes should be allowed to transfer and play immediately.
Peter: This has to be Westbrook, right? If she’s playing, we’re easily one of the very best teams in the country, in a strong position to win a championship. (At press time, Westbrook’s waiver has been wrongly and corruptly denied by a the criminal bad actors at the NCAA. Appeals to follow.)
First and Second Team All- Americans
Tyler: First team: Williams, Walker. Second team: Dangerfield
Russ: Yeah.
Meghan: Crystal, Williams and Walker could all make an All-American team this year.
Peter: I could see any of Dangerfield, Williams, Walker, ONO being AA, and Westbrook too if she plays.
Kevin: Dangerfield and Williams. Wouldn’t be shocked if Walker made it as well.
Breakout Player
Russ: It’s ONO. When Geno speaks, you listen, and he insisted during the NCAA Tournament last year that Nelson-Ododa is going to be a great player.
Meghan: Megan Walker. She’s going to be counted on to do a lot of the scoring, with 40 points a game having graduated with KLS and Pheesa. Walker looked strong in the exhibition, and I expect to see her drop 30 points in a game several times this season.
Kevin: ONO. She showed flashes last year and had a good summer with the national team, and she physically can do things no one else on the roster can do. Once the light bulb turns on for her she is going to be ferociously good.
Peter: This will be the year that Molly Bent becomes a star.
Tyler: Walker’s somewhat quiet personality and ups-and-downs as an underclassmen sometimes lead to me forgetting she exists despite having the most raw talent on the roster. This is the year she puts it all together and throws up an insane, player-of-the-year level stat line.
Leader in Scoring, Rebounding, Assists
Peter: Williams, ONO, Dangerfield
Kevin: Dangerfield, Walker, Dangerfield
Meghan: Walker, ONO, Dangerfield
Russ: Dangerfield, Adebayo, Dangerfield
Tyler: Walker, ONO, Dangerfield
Regular Season Losses
Russ: Oregon and Baylor.
Meghan: I’m going with 1. Baylor and Oregon are both incredibly tough match ups, but I never bet against UConn in Gampel, that way madness lies.
Kevin: 2.
Tyler: Baylor, Oregon, South Carolina, USFlolol can you imagine hahahaha
Peter: LOL.
National Championship or Nah?
Kevin: Nah.
Tyler: Nah. [Gets pelted with hard candies and my grandfather’s war medals.]
Meghan: I will not say nah, but I will say that UConn will I expect a trophy next year fo sho.
Peter: Of course.
Russ: Nah, next year’s the year.
Great and/or Crazy Thing Geno Says Before the Tournament
Peter: “They invited us to play in the men’s tournament, but we didn’t think there would be enough competition for us.”
Meghan: I bet he makes a salty crack about how they are leaving the AAC having never lost a game and that he hopes they get some competition in the Big East.
Kevin: “I will hunt down the vigilante Russ Steinberg until he pays for his crimes,” sparking UConn to a 47-point win over [spins wheel] Texas A&M.
Russ: He’s going to shit on the AAC somehow. Probably once the bracket is revealed and the two AAC teams are UConn and 11 seed USF.
Tyler: It’s 2020 and Geno’s gonna get political and it’ll be a fuckin’ mess. Let’s get silly.
Applicable ONO Acrostic:
Russ: O bviously the N ext O husky of honor
Kevin: O atie N ou O amuelson
Peter: O livia N ewton jOhn
Meghan: O livia N ever O misses
Tyler: O dunkin’s N ewest O spokesperson
Wild Card
Meghan: ONO WILL DUNK IN A GAME PLEASE I HAVE WAITED SO LONG
Peter: Someone will dunk this year. Who?
Kevin: One AAC game will be weirdly close in the fourth quarter. It’ll be weird.
Tyler: Chris Dailey coaches three games this season.
Russ: We are going to refer to something as “The Molly Bent Game.”
Meghan, I, and many other UConn WBB fans with looooong memories, would see it as a personal favor if ONO would dunk against Tennessee.