STORRS, Conn. _ Molly Bent arrived to practice Saturday morning coming off her last final of the semester. And while most UConn students will spend the school's upcoming five-week winter break recuperating, the UConn women's basketball team gets to dive into a stretch of practice, practice, and more practice _ with a pair of games sprinkled in _ before kicking off its hectic January schedule.
"As much as we love school, there's nothing better than being able to have a month off and just focus on basketball," said Bent, a senior majoring in mathematics. "It's a lot of fun, and it's just that extra time that you can take to get into the gym more and spend more time with your teammates. It's really just us on campus so it's a lot of fun and I enjoy it every year."
The Huskies have nine games (seven after Jan. 1 including their home matchup against No. 6 Baylor) before classes resume. Then in their first week back, starting Jan. 20, they kick off a stretch of five games in 12 days, beginning with Tennessee. As a point of comparison, the team only has four games in the entire month of December.
"I think it's been good because we've had some time to focus on things for each individual game a couple of days in advance," senior Kyla Irwin said. "That's kind of nice having such a space in between different games."
But having too much free time outside of basketball isn't completely ideal, either, which is what the team runs into this upcoming week in between the DePaul and Oklahoma games. The coaching staff actively tries to keep the team engaged during the break by planning various games and activities, Bent said.
"That is time to get extra time in the gym, spend time with your teammates, but it's also time where we could kind of get a little lackadaisical and kind of have too much downtime," Bent said. "So it's just (about) being focused and taking that extra time to get better, both individually and as a team.
