UConn women’s basketball rallies to beat Creighton, 62-60

Despite trailing by as many as 11 points in the fourth quarter, UConn women’s basketball battled back to beat the Creighton Bluejays, 62-60, at Gampel Pavilion Wednesday night.

Caroline Ducharme hit a pair of free throws with 4.8 seconds left to give the Huskies the lead while Creighton’s Lauren Jensen — who came into the game shooting 83.7 percent from the line — missed a pair from the stripe with 0.7 remaining to close out the Husky win.

UConn trailed from the 9:15 mark in the third quarter until the 1:43 mark of the fourth quarter when Lou Lopez Sénéchal put the team ahead with a layup as part of a 7-0 run. The Bluejays responded with a 3-pointer the other way to go back ahead, but Lopez Sénéchal came back with an elbow jumper.

On the ensuing Creighton possession, Dorka Juhász forced a steal and then got fouled, but the Huskies couldn’t take advantage. Juhász missed a 3-pointer with 26 seconds left and the Bluejays grabbed the rebound. They took the ball up the floor and drove to the basket, but Lopez Sénéchal stepped in and drew a charge with 16.0 remaining.

UConn put the ball in Ducharme’s hands for the last shot and the sophomore — in her first game back after missing the last 13 contests with a concussion — drew a foul and sunk the game-winning free throws with 4.8 left.

Ducharme finished with 10 points — all in the fourth quarter — while Lopez Sénéchal led the way with 17 points. Juhász had 10 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists while Aaliyah Edwards totaled 12 points and nine rebounds.

The Huskies committed just seven turnovers, a season-low. Both teams went 22-of-58 from the field, though UConn shot (and made) eight more free throws.

Neither team seemed all that interested in getting the ball inside early. Over half (18) of the 31 combined shots in the first quarter came from behind the arc, where Creighton hit four and UConn made three. The Huskies were up one after 10 minutes thanks to a pair of free throws.

In the second quarter, UConn started to establish itself in the paint against an undersized Creighton team. The Huskies ripped off an 11-0 run to go up by double digits and scored nine of those points from either layups or free throws.

Then, the offense vanished. UConn scored just one point over the final 3:34 of the half, which opened the door for the Bluejays to pull back within two at the midway point.

The Huskies struggled to find their offense out of the break. It took them over five minutes to score their first points of the second half as Creighton grabbed the lead and extended it to as many as nine points. Juhász finally drained a triple from the top of the arc to snap the drought, though that failed to spark the team.

UConn went another two and a half minutes without a point before Lopez Sénéchal converted an old-fashioned 3-point play, but it still finished the third quarter with just eight points and faced a nine-point deficit entering the final 10 minutes.

Creighton quickly pushed the gap to 11 with a jumper on its first possession and held the Huskies in check through the first five minutes of the fourth. Then, Nika Mühl drove the rim off the dribble with 5:53 left. From there, UConn out-scored the visitors 15-5 to pull off the comeback and came away with a two-point win.

Next, the Huskies’ tough conference slate continues with a trip down to Philadelphia to face Villanova and Maddy Siegrist, who has scored 89 points in her last two games. Tip-off is set for 2:30 p.m. ET on SNY.