It's the Maya Moore Show...Again

Updated 9:48 PM EDT, Tue, Jan 6, 2009

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Maya Moore scored 24 points and Tina Charles had 17 points and 12 rebounds Tuesday night, leading top-ranked Connecticut to an 83-37 rout of South Florida in the Huskies' Big East opener.

UConn (14-0, 1-0) has opened the season with at least 14 straight wins for the second straight year and the eighth time since 1994-95. The Huskies have won 17 conference openers in a row and 100 consecutive games against non-ranked opponents since a loss at Arizona State in December 2004.

USF (13-3, 0-2) entered the game as the nation's highest scoring team (89.9 per game, just ahead of UConn's 88.8). The Bulls missed 20 of their first 27 shots to fall behind 45-26 at the half, then only managed 11 points after halftime.

Moore had 20 points, six rebounds and three assists at the break, and the Huskies held USF's leading scorer, Shantia Grace, without a field goal for the first 16 minutes of the game. Grace finished with eight points on 2-for-12 shooting, and backcourt mate Jazmine Sepulveda was 0-for-8.

The victory extended UConn's regular-season winning streak to 22 games and ended USF's school-record 12-game home winning streak before a crowd of 4,290, up from the 737 the Bulls averaged for their first 10 games at the Sun Dome.

Moore scored 15 of the Huskies' first 21 points and finished 10 of 19 from the field. Charles had her 29th career double-double and Kalana Greene added 13 for UConn. Renee Montgomery had 9 points, as no UConn starter played no more than 26 minutes.

UConn led 26-16 before using a 9-2 spurt to pull away for good. As poorly as USF shot in the opening half (10-of-35, 28.6 percent), the Bulls struggled even more after halftime (5-for-26, 19.2 percent).

The Huskies scored the first nine points of the second half, building the lead to 54-26 with 15:39 to go. The closest South Florida got after that was 24 points.

Porche Grant led USF with 10 points. Brittany Denson had six points and 12 rebounds, while the Bulls' leading scorer off the bench, Janae Stokes, missed all six of her 3-point attempts and finished 1-for-9 with four points.