With 16:34 remaining in the first round of the NCAA tournament game against No. 16 seed Prairie View A&M Saturday at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Conn., junior guard Kelly Faris ’13 (ED) hit a rare 3-point shot to give the No. 1 seed Huskies a 17-point lead. Moments later she dove headlong to the floor to give UConn possession of the ball. Less than a minute after that, Faris tipped a missed shot to Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis ’15 (CLAS), who scored an uncontested lay-up.
By the time Faris left the game, her statistics line in the box score was typical: 6 points, 6 rebounds, 8 assists, and 3 steals. Not as flashy as the 21 points posted by Mosqueda-Lewis, the 15 points by center Stefanie Dolson ’14 (CLAS), or the 18 from point guard Bria Hartley ’14 (CLAS), yet an important part of the 83-47 win that sent the Huskies into the second round of the tournament on Monday (7 p.m. (ESPN2) against No. 8 seed Kansas State.
“There was a stretch there when I thought every rebound that came off the rim, she got it, every assist was hers,” said head coach Geno Auriemma. “Kelly is one of those kids that doesn’t have to shoot the ball to get pleasure out of the game.”
Faris says she simply plays the game the way she was taught in her native Indiana, where basketball is a revered sport.
“I think we’re the fundamental state, we do all those little things,” she said. “That’s how I was coached. Everybody wants to score. But if I have somebody on my team hitting lights out, I want to get [her] the ball. I want to win. I want our team to win. I’m going to do anything possible to get that done. Whether that means I score, I pass, or I rebound, I’m going to do it.”
In the first half, when the Huskies jumped out to an 8-0 lead against the Panthers, Faris pulled down two rebounds that started plays resulting in Dolson lay-ups.
“Faris does all the little things that you don’t see in the stat book,” said Prairie View head coach Toyelle Wilson. “We didn’t want to double on Dolson, because Faris was cutting to the basket.”
“Kelly is one of the most important players on this team,” Dolson said after the game. “She does fly under the radar, because she does everything. She guards the best player on the other team and makes her take tough shots. She’s a key player for us.”
Just as important, Auriemma said during his post-game comments, Faris has the complete trust of her teammates during this season, in the absence of a single player who can be relied upon at critical junctures in a game.
“It’s good to have that feeling that your teammates trust you on the floor,” Faris said. “That’s kind of where we’ve had to learn to adjust. We don’t have the All Americans who are going to bail us out every game. I think we’ve learned that for us to have the best possible game, we have to work as a group the entire game. It’s had to be an entire team effort.”
Prairie View, undersized and undermanned with only eight players, fought back in the first half after being down by as many as 17 points. The Panthers’ Latia Williams and JaQuandria Williams kept shooting and cut the lead to 11, never getting closer after the Huskies opened the second half with a 21-4 run led by Hartley and Mosqueda-Lewis.
“I think the girls gave everything they had,” Wilson said of her team. I think you can tell they wanted to win, they wanted to compete, and they weren’t going to give up. [The Huskies] kind of wore us down. I’m proud of our kids. I told them this game doesn’t define them or their season, and let’s use this as a motivation for next season.”
Kansas State got by No. 9 seed Princeton 67-64 to advance to Monday’s game, led by senior forwards Branshea Brown, who scored 22 points and had 7 rebounds, and Jalana Childs, who had 15 points and 8 boards.
