Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: Geno’s point is made as KK returns; the newest UConn Olympian and more

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Sure, the UConn women beat Providence by 37 points on New Year’s Eve. Yes, they did it without their starting point guard. That didn’t preclude Geno Auriemma from using words and phrases like “stupid” and “lazy” and “makes you want to stab your eyes out.”

A little dramatic, a little over the top maybe? Okay, it was way over the top, but Auriemma had just gotten his first look at his top-ranked team without KK Arnold on the floor running the show, and he saw enough to know he didn’t want a second look.

“In KK’s case, there is nobody else on the team that would be able to replicate what she does,” Auriemma said after Arnold returned from her one-game absence in an 84-48 win over Seton Hall on Saturday at PeoplesBank Arena.

“So when you do have her in the game, you do have that, she does become incredibly valuable as a tone-setter, that the game is going to start a certain way, kind of a frenetic pace to it that the other team may not be equipped to handle.”

Arnold sustained a nasal fracture during practice on Tuesday, a collision with a teammate. The swelling around her nose made it difficult to see, so she sat. UConn (15-0) has so much talent, that what was missing was hardly perceptible to the untrained eye. Auriemma, with 12 national championships and 1,200-plus wins, is hardly an untrained set of eyes.

The Huskies, despite the presence of two of the best players in the country, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, needed their glue player back as soon as possible, even if it didn’t show up in the final score.

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“Just focusing on the swelling,” Arnold said, “making sure it goes down so I could see out of both eyes.”

Two days was enough. Arnold, with two black eyes, a little lingering puffiness and a mask to protect the healing nasal bones, was good to go. She played 19 minutes in the with five points, five assists, five steals and a lot of other things that never show up in the box score.

“I feel like, KK, when she starts the game off, she just brings different energy on the court, offensively and obviously defensively,” said Strong, who scored 18 points. “Yeah, she’s just that girl.”

Arnold, in her junior year, has had to grow up on the job in the program, injuries to others forcing Auriemma to play her more as a freshman than he normally would. Last season, she came off the bench, but logged a lot of minutes during the championship run. This year, she was handed the keys to a vehicle intended to take the Huskies to a repeat, maybe another undefeated season, and she has been driving, facilitating and disrupting.

Seton Hall (10-5, 4-3) in the Big East couldn’t match up, turned the ball over 32 times, the Huskies getting 20 steals.

UConn women’s basketball rings in new year with dominant 84-48 victory over Seton Hall

“Our defense creates for our offensive, a lot of opportunities and gives us a lot of momentum,” Arnold said. “I feel that’s a big emphasis these last few games, creating off of that.”

Arnold is averaging 6.9 points, 4.7 assists, 2.5 rebounds, 2.3 steals and only one turnover per game. Beyond the numbers, the Huskies without her, Auriemma says, start to look a little “zolanud,” an old word he used to hear colleague Dom Perno say at UConn. He says it means discombobulated, though it would be as hard to find in any Italian-to-English dictionary as it is to KK Arnold’s important to this UConn team on a printed page.

“I was proud of her for getting right back out there,” Auriemma said.

Olympic Husky

Tage Thompson, an NHL All-Star, will be the first to represent UConn on the U.S. Olympic hockey team, as he was included on the roster for the upcoming winter games in Italy. Thompson, who scored a dramatic gold medal-winning goal at the World Championships last year, has 20 goals, 37 points in 39 games for the Sabres.

“Tage’s journey from his time at UConn to the world stage speaks to his commitment to the game,” UConn coach Mike Cavanaugh said. “He earned everything that’s come his way, and he’s a tremendous representative of UConn hockey and USA Hockey.

“We’re extremely proud of him and excited to watch him compete at the highest level.”
Team USA starts off Feb. 12 vs. Latvia in Milano Cortina, Italy.

“Anytime you get to put that crest on and represent your country it means a lot,” Thompson said in a video the Sabres made as he got the call. “It’s really cool, it’s a goal I think I’ve worked for toward for a very long time, dreamt of as a kid. For it to be coming true now is pretty special.

Sunday short takes

With Baylor and James Nnaji opening floodgates, more college teams are scouting pro leagues, including the G League, for midseason additions. How is this not a sudden, major change in the rules? NCAA president Charlie Baker said this week players who have signed NBA contracts will not be granted eligibility, but U.S. pro players shouldn’t be at a disadvantage. Does this mean the “test the waters” process and its late-May deadline are no more? A college player can declare for the NBA or WNBA Draft and as long as they don’t sign and have eligibility remaining, they can return to school afterward, as in baseball and hockey?

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*The Cowboys activated Rocky Hill’s Justin Barron, linebacker/safety hybrid type who starred at Syracuse, off their practice squad for the Christmas Day game vs. Washington. Barron, who played at Suffield Academy, saw some action on special teams. Dallas plays the Giants in East Rutherford in the season finale Sunday.

*Tell you a UConn football player who helped himself in the Fenway Bowl: Kicker Chris Freeman. Capping two solid seasons for the Huskies, Freeman drilled a 49-yard field goal off the frozen, slick turf in frigid weather, worth noting for NFL teams in the Northeast and Upper Midwest.

*For those calling on the Giants or Jets to give up a slew of draft picks for Joe Burrow, I would respectfully pose this question: When was the last time a trade like that actually worked out for either franchise? Y.A. Tittle? Got to develop your own guy.

*Former Notre Dame-West Haven quarterback Sean Goldrich has been named the new head coach at New Hampshire. Goldrich played at New Hampshire, 2012-15, and coached quarterbacks at Delaware, where the offense had a lot of success.

*Aidan Mahaney, who didn’t work out as a transfer at UConn last season, is thriving now that he is back on the West Coast with UC-Santa Barbara averaging, 14.9 points, shooting 44 percent on threes, going 7 for 7 from behind the arc in a win over Cal State Bakersfield. Tarris Reed Jr. has been keeping in touch. “Aidan’s been killing it,” Reed said. “Hopefully he gets the player of the year, I told him that, that should be the standard for him, to be player of the year in (the Big West) conference.”

*Dan Hurley’s New Year’s resolution is to give up late-night sweets, particularly ice cream. I would suggest another: Stop giving oxygen to anonymous social media trolls by taking them on publicly, as he did at Cincinnati. Ignoring or muting is the best way to disarm them.

Last word

UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close lamented to an LA Times reporter last week that there were no reporters interviewing her after the Bruins game at Ohio State, a matchup of ranked teams. I can empathize. Sure, in Connecticut, women’s hoops has long been covered as a mainstream sport; readers and viewers demand it.

But this isn’t solely a women’s basketball issue. Today, there are even MLB and NBA teams with diminishing in-person media coverage. Over the last 15-20 years, major pro and college teams have leaned heavily into in-house content creation, “We’ll tell our stories our own way.”

So access for traditional media has been continually whittled down, and with dwindling resources it has become a tough sell to send a reporter out of town to ask one or two questions in a press conference that’s recorded and soon posted on social media. One suggestion for encouraging local sports media to come out is to allow more meaningful, less-structured interview opportunities.

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