OMAHA, Neb. — Sarah Strong and coach Geno Auriemma were still bickering over a foul call as they sat down for their postgame press conference almost 20 minutes after the final buzzer sounded on the UConn women’s basketball team’s 95-54 rout of Creighton on Sunday afternoon.
“It was dumb, very dumb,” Auriemma jabbed at the sophomore forward, who gave him an incredulous look, insisting that she’d made a clean play.
“I know, it wasn’t a foul. The refs suck, I know,” the Huskies coach joked with an eye roll.
Strong finished with her fifth double-double of the season in the win over Creighton, logging 18 points and 13 rebounds on 70% shooting. She was plus-38 in just 26 minutes on the court, also leading UConn in assists with six and steals with five.
But because Strong gives him so little to complain about, Auriemma is fixated on the details, the minor adjustments that can take her already-elite game to yet another level. On Sunday, it was her season-high four fouls — contributing to the Huskies’ 18 as a team — and her pair of turnovers in a game where UConn gave up a season-worst 21.
“Mentally I think we make decisions that — you don’t go from eight fouls the other night, in a game that I think was a little more physical than this one, to however many we had today,” Auriemma said after Strong left the podium. “And their response always is, ‘It wasn’t a foul.’ … So between the turnovers and the number of fouls, there was some questionable decision-making by us.”
Decision-making has been Auriemma’s common point of critique for Strong in recent weeks as the sophomore continues to build her case for national player of the year amid the Huskies’ undefeated start to the 2025-26 season. To call Strong turnover-prone would be a gross exaggeration, but as she takes on more responsibility as the centerpiece of UConn’s offense, inconsistencies have arisen that Auriemma attributes almost entirely to her pass-first mindset. There are times when Strong searches for open teammates before recognizing her own clear look at the basket, forcing connections opponents are more likely to disrupt instead of taking the path of least resistance.
“She’s just got to get rid of that, ‘If I miss I’m hurting my team,’” Auriemma said last week following a win over Seton Hall. “No, if you pass it, you’re hurting our team … We watch on the film, and you can point out to somebody, why didn’t you shoot that? ‘Well you know, I thought she was open.’ Well, everybody thinks you’re going to shoot, so shoot it.”
UConn’s Sarah Strong, left, steals the ball from Creighton’s Kennedy Townsend, right, during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Strong is a remarkable facilitator for a player with her size and skillset, and her impulse to share the ball is usually a good one on a roster where she is constantly surrounded by other elite scorers. But Strong is the most complete offensive weapon the Huskies have, and Auriemma is pushing her to lean into that dominance. The star forward currently leads UConn, averaging 18.4 points per game hitting 60% from the field and 42.4% from 3-point range, and her true shooting percent ranks in the 99th percentile nationally.
“The most challenging part for me is always thinking pass first, even when I’m driving to the basket, because I just want to get my teammates involved,” Strong said Sunday. “It’s been challenging because in practice I’ll over-pass and have a good amount of turnovers, so I just need to learn how to think score first and look for myself before (others).”
Even in the win at Creighton when the Huskies were struggling early, it took Strong a quarter to truly begin taking over the game. She had four assists but just four points and had taken only three field goal attempts at the end of the first, and UConn was ahead by just seven at the buzzer. She then shot 6-for-7 across 16 minutes for 14 points in the second and third quarters, and the Huskies had opened up a 39-point lead by the start of the fourth.
“There are times when she gets the ball early and doesn’t force the issue, which I would like her to,” Auriemma said. “There are times where we might come down the first five possessions of the game and we’ve got five guys that are wide open that shoot it, because that’s what we’re used to, and she hasn’t had enough touches yet … We don’t in the beginning and maybe we should, but we get to a point early in the game where we make a concerted effort to be intentional and get her the ball in certain spots.”
Auriemma demanding selfishness from an innately unselfish superstar is a familiar refrain for those who listened to him deliver the same message to Paige Bueckers throughout her five seasons at UConn. The Huskies coach acknowledged that the culture he’s built within the program is part of the issue, because it attracts the kind of players that value a team-focused system over high-volume individual performance.
There are worse problems to have than a selfless teammate, and it’s easier to teach a more aggressive mindset than it is to reign in selfish habits, but patience has never been Auriemma’s strong suit. As he chases his 13th national championship, Auriemma is having to remind himself regularly that the season comes with ups and downs — and that Strong is still just 57 games into her young college career.
“There isn’t that, this is where she is and she’s kind of nearing her peak. There’s so many things she can do that we’re not seeing right now,” Auriemma said on his radio show last week. “I just think she has to become a little more assertive and not be so worried about getting everybody else that ball. Our best players a lot of times suffer from that over the course of their careers here, and I think maybe that’s why they come here … If you’re very selfish, you’re not going to play here, but there’s a fine line. I don’t want Sarah to pass the ball unless somebody’s wide open.”
Sarah Strong, Blanca Quinonez give UConn women’s basketball fifth sweep of Big East weekly awards
