At noon Sunday, UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma wasn’t certain what to expect over the next couple of hours facing, the nation’s top-ranked and unbeaten team in South Carolina.

Last time the teams met, UConn scored just 49 points in the 2022 national championship game in Minneapolis as the confetti fell from the rafters that night in honor of South Carolina.

And now, the Huskies were facing the Gamecocks in a situation where they were shorthanded. No Paige Bueckers. No Azzi Fudd. No Caroline Ducharme. All out with injuries.

South Carolina won the game 81-77 before 15,564 fans at the XL Center, but UConn led 25-14 at the end of one quarter and also scored 15 points in the final 1:55 after trailing 74-62, making for a pulsating finish.

Fourth-ranked UConn (21-3, 13-0) continues its Big East schedule on Wednesday at 8 p.m. (SNY) at Marquette (15-8, 8-6). Auriemma feels differently about the Huskies than he did before.

“I asked them that. I said, ‘Do you feel like you’re half full or half empty? What do you think? One guess who said, ‘It’s empty, it sucks, we lost,” said Auriemma, referring to the fiery point guard, Nika Muhl. “So. I acknowledged, yes it does, it’s supposed to feel that way.

“But the way the game was played and the way we responded and the way we controlled the tempo of the game for long, long stretches, how we were really, really good for long stretches. How we were really bad for long stretches and yet we didn’t just go hide and let it become 15, 20 and feel sorry for ourselves.

“I said, ‘I feel better at 2:00 or 3:00 today than I did at 12:00.’ I know more now than I did at noon and I feel better about my team.”

UConn junior Aaliyah Edwards battled foul trouble but finished with 25 points on an efficient 10-for-14 shooting, four rebounds and a blocked shot. Edwards, averaging 17.1 points and 8.7 rebounds per game, was named Tuesday as one of 30 players on the Naismith Player of the Year Midseason Team.

Lou Lopez Senechal had 19 points and Aubrey Griffin 17 against South Carolina. Four of five starters played 37 minutes or more.

Auriemma said he hopes to add players from the injured list “sooner rather than later.” Ducharme (concussion) and Fudd (right knee), both sophomores, are expected back, with Ducharme returning as early as this week, the coach said.

Bueckers, an All-American as a freshman before being sidelined the last two seasons, is out for the year with a knee injury, as is freshman Ice Brady.

“Azzi and Paige were standing outside (following the loss to South Carolina) and I said, ‘Paige, you playing in March?’ And she goes, ‘Yup.’ I said, ‘How about you, Azzi?” And she goes, ‘A lot sooner than that, hopefully.’ So I think Azzi was being truthful; Paige was lying her (butt) off.“

Despite the injuries, perhaps because of them, the UConn players have a great deal of belief in one another.

“They believe in each other. They support each other. They hold each other accountable,” Auriemma said. “They know none of them are going to disappoint them by not showing up, by not playing hard. I think there’s a huge amount of trust among themselves that’s a little more than it was in the past.”

Auriemma wasn’t ready to talk about a rematch with South Carolina, which could come in the NCAA tournament.

The Huskies have back-to-back road games at Marquette and Georgetown (Saturday). They need a few more players, currently down to eight. A lot has to go right between now and then.

“We’ve got a really, really difficult game at Marquette on Wednesday,” Auriemma said. “With this year’s team, that’s about as far as we allow ourselves to look.”

“I think going into this game, we didn’t really think about, ‘What if we had this person?’ or if we were healthy,” UConn’s Edwards said Sunday. “We didn’t go with any doubts. For us to kind of put up what we did and compete and stay with them today, that just shows our caliber and our mentality toughing it out.”

UConn beat Marquette 61-48 on Dec. 31, getting 22 points from Lopez Senechal.

v.fulkerson@theday.com