Whether we think the Huskies' loss to Notre Dame over the weekend was good for women's basketball probably means little to the coaches and players who ended up on the wrong side of the 73-72 score. Fair enough. But the season's still young; it's barely January and there is, as they say, plenty of basketball left to play.
It's why coach Geno Auriemma canceled Monday's practice, who understands better than almost anybody in the game when to push his team and when to take his foot off the pedal. This was time for the latter, even if senior Kelly Faris felt differently.
“I would have liked to have done more,’’ she said via the Connecticut News' Rich Elliott. “I definitely would’ve liked to have had a practice, but it is what it is and you’ve got to learn from it. So tomorrow is Day 1. Start back over and you’ve got to set to the tone right from tomorrow. Tomorrow is a pretty important day I think for us, and that’s how we have to approach it. We have to approach it like tomorrow is extremely important and the next day is even much more important and so on.’’
Silver lining: when the Huskies return to the court Tuesday, they'll do so with all 11 players, something they haven't been able to say all season.
“I am really looking forward to that,” Auriemma said. “We’ll be able throw out some different looks, mix things up a little.”
And while Auriemma's teams will never settle for losing, there's also nearly three months left on the schedule. Put differently: one game doesn't define a season.
“You can’t really look back,’’ sophomore Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis said. “You’ve got to learn from what happened before, but right now we’ve just to got to really focus on ourselves, focus on getting better, getting back on our feet and making sure that the same thing doesn’t happen again.’’
