WBB Notes - 12.29
Primetime Top-25 Showdown
One of the most anticipated showdowns of the BIG EAST women’s basketball regular season is set for Tuesday night in Storrs, Conn., as No. 18/20 DePaul visits No. 4/5 Connecticut. The BIG EAST preseason favorite Huskies will square off with the reigning regular season and tournament champion Blue Demons at Gampel Pavilion at 6:30 p.m. ET, with the game airing on SNY. SNY games are available to stream in-market (CT, NY, NJ, PA) to authenticated subscribers via the NBC Sports app. Out-of-market fans are able to stream the SNY games at no additional cost to authenticated subscribers who have FOX as part of their television package at https://www.foxsports.com/ or in the FOX Sports app. Among the notable player matchups to look for on Tuesday is BIG EAST Preseason Player of the Year Christyn Williams against reigning BIG EAST Player of the Week Sonya Morris. Williams is second on UConn in scoring at 17.6 points per game and fifth in the BIG EAST in assist-turnover ratio (2.6). Morris leads DePaul and ranks fourth in the conference with an 18.7 scoring average while also adding 2.1 steals per game. The scoreboard is bound to light up frequently as both teams rank among the national leaders in scoring offense – UConn ninth at 89.4 ppg and DePaul 11^th at 88.3. For more on what these two squads have combined for, see below.     
 
Inside The Matchup: UConn at DePaul
For the third time since the 2013-14 season, a BIG EAST regular-season matchup is a showdown between two teams ranked in the AP Poll. The Blue Demons have been in the last two of those contests (vs. No. 25 Seton Hall, 1/5/16; vs. No. 20 Marquette, 1/4/19). DePaul and UConn have met in non-conference play in each of the last six seasons, including last year’s thriller in Chicago which saw the Blue Demons rally before the Huskies escaped Wintrust Arena with an 84-74 victory. A number of notable stats these two teams have combined for include:

• 25 BIG EAST regular-season titles
• 23 BIG EAST Tournament titles
• 1,823 career wins between head coaches Geno Auriemma and Doug Bruno, including 591 in BIG EAST regular-season play
• 20 BIG EAST Players of the Year and 13 BIG EAST Scholar-Athletes of the Year
• 52 WNBA Draft selections
• 57 NCAA Tournament selections, including 2020 when both teams won their respective conference tournaments to earn automatic bids into what would become a cancelled national postseason
• 88.8 points per game – the combined scoring average for both teams in 2020-21

 
Up Next
After a quiet Wednesday, BIG EAST play cranks back up on Thursday with a pair of games on the BIG EAST Digital Network presented by SoFi, available on FloSports. Butler (0-3, 0-2 BIG EAST) visits Georgetown (0-1, 0-1) for a noon tilt, followed by Providence (4-4, 2-1) at Xavier (3-3, 0-2) at 1 p.m. It will mark just the second game of the season for the Hoyas, and the first for the Bulldogs since Dec. 9. The Friars and Musketeers both enter the contest with .500 records overall, with XU eyeing its first BIG EAST win of the season.