Nobody's Perfect

PISCATAWAY, N.J. - The 26th all-time meeting between UConn and Rutgers was a little different than any of the games before. For one, offense played a much bigger factor in the result than in previous match-ups.

Oh, there was another difference - Rutgers actually came out on top.

No. 7 Rutgers held off a furious second-half rally to shock No. 1 UConn (21-1, 8-1 Big East), 73-71 at a sold-out Louis Brown Athletic Center. The win was the second straight in the series and sixth in 26 tries.

Epiphany Prince was the main factor, scoring a career-high 33 points, including an unconscious 8-for-10 shooting effort in the second half. After being held to six points in the first 20 minutes, Prince scored 16 over a four-minute span to bring Rutgers back from a nine-point halftime deficit. She then scored seven straight to put the Scarlet Knights (19-3, 9-1 Big East) up, 70-63, with 1:42 left.

Prince was also a perfect 11-for-11 from the free-throw line, preserving the lead she helped to build.

"We mixed up our defenses a little bit, but I don't think we doubled her as much as we probably could have," said UConn coach Geno Auriemma. "You'd like to think that one of your guys can guard one of theirs."

"My teammates kept encouraging me to shoot," Prince said. "[They were] telling me that's my job and that eventually they'll fall in."

Maya Moore hit 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions to erase much of the deficit. The freshman, who scored all 15 of her points in the second half, cut the deficit to 72-69 with just over a minute to play. Then, the Huskies had a chance to tie after forcing a shot-clock violation with 34 seconds to go.

But on UConn's second-to-last possession, the Huskies ran the clock down to 12 seconds before Renee Montgomery dropped a pass from Ketia Swanier. Rutgers' Essence Carson retrieved it and made a critical free throw to give Rutgers a four-point lead.

"They set a double for me, I came off and lost the ball," Montgomery said. "That's it."

Swanier made a lay-up with 0.4 seconds left, but it was not enough, as Rutgers celebrated arguably its biggest regular-season win in school history.

The Huskies led, 33-24 at halftime thanks to Montgomery and Tina Charles, who scored 24 points between them. For a while, it looked like a reprise of last February's UConn-Rutgers game at the Rutgers Athletic Center - a close game early, which turned into a 70-44 UConn blowout.

But this UConn team was minus two starters and, more importantly, two scorers in Kalana Greene and Mel Thomas.

"Unless they stop playing - which they did last year - it's hard to pull away," Auriemma said. "I think if we had anther ball handler on the floor against their pressure it might have been different."

Yet the Huskies shot 50 percent from the field in the second half. Startlingly, against such a normally low-octane Rutgers team, it wasn't enough.

"I think it was something within ourselves that we just couldn't pull it out," Moore said. "We could sense it at some times that we weren't there and handling the pressure like we should."

In the second half, UConn relied on too many jump shots which didn't fall and then turned the ball over (14 in the game, eight in the second half), while Rutgers worked from the inside-out. Rutgers center Kia Vaughn scored 14 points on 7-for-8 shooting. When UConn had to double her, it left Prince and Matee Ajavon, who scored 13, with open shots.

Prince did an especially superb job of getting to the rim and drawing contact. Her back-to-back and-one lay-ups were part of her own personal 11-0 run that turned a 44-35 UConn lead to a 46-44 Rutgers advantage.

"I looked at the way she played [before tonight]," Stringer said. "She was soft and tentative and praying the shots would go in … [but tonight] she had a way of coming up with the ball."

Only three players - Moore, Charles and Montgomery - scored in double figures for the Huskies, who saw their 34-game regular-season win streak snapped in heartbreaking fashion.

"The way we lost, it hurts the most, knowing we didn't step up like we could have," Moore said. "This is probably the best time to lose, because it's so early in the season."

Charles finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds, while Montgomery ended up with 24.

The two teams meet in a regular-season-ending rematch at the XL Center March 3.

Contact Kevin Meacham at Kevin.Meacham@UConn.edu.