Azzi Fudd, arguably the best shooter in women’s college basketball this season, suffered an erratic start to the NCAA Tournament regional rounds in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday afternoon. 

Fudd shot just 1-7 in the first half against North Carolina without a made 3-pointer and ultimately finished just 33% from the field, with her UConn teammates faring little better on a 4-20 afternoon from long range. It was a similar story during the first game at Dickies Arena between Notre Dame and Vanderbilt, two fairly proficient perimeter shooting teams that finished a combined 6-35 from 3-point territory. 

“I would just say it’s not ideal,” Fudd said. “Like the schedule, [we’re] waking up early to do media and then can’t come back to this arena until later, just little things like that. …There’s no excuse in that, so we’ll figure it out. We’re making it work, but it definitely isn’t the most ideal setup.”

After pulling away from North Carolina in the second half to earn a 63-42 victory in the Sweet 16, UConn looked ahead to a complicated schedule Saturday ahead of an Elite Eight showdown with former Big East rival Notre Dame. The Huskies reported to Dickies Arena at 9 a.m. for media availability and were saddled with quite a bit of downtime, as their shootaround availability at the same venue is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. — the whiplash continues, as UConn faced a 7:30 a.m. shootaround before Friday’s game.

These disjointed schedules are, in part, the result of a “super regional” format, which consolidates the four regional final events in the women’s NCAA Tournament into just two host sites, Sacramento and Fort Worth. The NCAA implemented this format on the women’s side in 2023 as an attempt to address dwindling crowds at neutral-site, regional round games, but the total attendance figure across both venues sat at just 18,000 fans for Friday’s action, with visible swathes of empty seats poking through in a majority of games.

“I just don’t understand some of the decisions that are made about our game when we’re trying to grow the game,” Auriemma said. “…Does anybody who makes these decisions ever ask the coaches and the players, ‘Hey, does this work? Do you guys do this during the regular season? Is this normal?'”