While the UConn Huskies women's basketball team is centered around three main superstars this season (Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, and Sarah Strong), they've also received steady and solid contributions from other players.
Perhaps the most notable is Kaitlyn Chen, who transferred to UConn for her fourth NCAA season after spending the first three years at Princeton.
Chen averaged 16 points per game at Princeton across her final two seasons. However, she has averaged 7 points per game for UConn this year. But when speaking with the media after his team's Big East Tournament semifinal win on Saturday, Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma asserted that, statistics aside, Chen has raised her WNBA Draft Stock this year.
"Kaitlyn Chen is the kind of player that every really really good team has," Auriemma said, per The UConn Daily YouTube account. "When you come from a program like Princeton... where they depended on her a lot, you might have come out of Princeton and go some place where you have the exact same role. And when she came here, she knew it was going to be a little bit different. But it's exactly the role that we need.
"It gives us a chance to play a certain way that we wouldn't be able to play if she wasn't here," Auriemma continued. "And I think she has raised her stock, in WNBA Draft stock. Because a lot of the GMs and a lot of the head coaches that have come to practice, she has become a better than average three-point shooter, she's a tremendous free throw shooter."
He concluded with, "She's going to make it in that league. I think if she was a back-up point guard for you her first year, you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody better."
Considering the caliber of WNBA greats Auriemma has coached across his legendary UConn career, this praise of Chen speaks volumes.
