Moore of the Same

Despite being undefeated and winning by an average of almost 34 points, Maya Moore believes the top-ranked Connecticut Huskies still have room to improve.
The star sophomore scored 18 points and grabbed 12 rebounds Tuesday night to help UConn (16-0, 3-0 Big East) to a 77-62 win over DePaul, the Huskies' 102nd victory against an unranked opponent.
Moore needs just 29 more to become the fastest UConn player to reach 1,000 for her career. But she scored just two points after intermission Tuesday and saw DePaul (13-5, 1-3) hold her team without a field goal during a 6-minute stretch in the second half.
"We've got to nip those things in the bud, because this is January and we want to go ahead and move forward," she said. "Our offensive flow should have been a little smoother than it was tonight."
Renee Montgomery added 16 points and nine assists and Tina Charles had 11 points and nine rebounds for UConn.
Natasha Williams and Deirdre Naughton each had 21 to lead DePaul (13-5, 1-3).
China Threatt, who had been averaging just over 3 points per game while coming back from a serious knee injury, added 12. Threatt hit four 3-pointers, all in the first half. She had made just 4-of-29 attempts from behind the arc this season coming into the game.
UConn has now won 24 consecutive regular-season games, and 32 straight at home. It was the Huskies' sixth straight win over DePaul.
Connecticut, which was playing on campus for the first time since Dec. 3, scored 3 seconds into the game when Moore drove to the basket off the opening tip. DePaul hung with the Huskies early, trailing 13-8 at the first timeout. But DePaul coach Doug Bruno would call two more timeouts in the next three minutes as UConn built a 22-8 lead.
The Huskies led 47-32 at halftime.
"It's fool's gold," said UConn coach Geno Auriemma. "You come out and you make a bunch of shots early on and then you get lulled into thinking it's going to be real easy, that every shot is going to drop and that getting shots is going to be easy, and it doesn't work that way."
UConn opened the second half with a 16-6 run. But DePaul refused to fold and closed the gap to 13 points at 66-53, behind the shooting of Williams, who hit four consecutive shots during that run.
"We just had a mentality of we're going to try and stabilize the game by just taking it a possession at a time and trying to get stops on defense," Williams said.
A 3-pointer from Caroline Doty and jumpers from Montgomery and Moore stretched the lead back to 20.
Doty, who had hit just six of her last 32 shots from behind the arc, was 4-of-7 on Tuesday, and finished with 12 points.
"I knew it was there," she said. "Coach pulled me aside yesterday and today to kind of get my head straight, to get my shot back to the way it was."
Fellow freshman Tiffany Hayes chipped in 10. It was the seventh time this season the Huskies have put at least five players in double figures.
"That's what makes UConn great, said Bruno. "They don't have one best kid; they have three or four. At the end of the night you look at the box score and we have two players in the 20s and they have five players in the teens. That's what makes great basketball teams."