Storrs — The box score from the national women's basketball semifinal in 2015 shows that UConn's Breanna Stewart had four blocked shots in an 81-58 victory over Maryland in Tampa.

Ace Harrison, a 6-foot-3 graduate forward for the Saint Francis (Pa.) women's basketball team has a direct connection with one of them. Harrison was a redshirt freshman that season at Maryland and doesn't recall that Stewie was anywhere close to her when she attempted the shot from the outside that got blocked.

“I promise,” Harrison said to laughter in the interview room Friday at Gampel Pavilion. “She's in the paint and all I remember is her blocking my shot.”

Harrison, who later made a shot in that game, has been able to provide her Saint Francis teammates with some valuable perspective this week on 11-time national champion UConn. No. 1 UConn plays No. 16 Saint Francis at 11 a.m. Saturday at Gampel.

“It just, you know, helps my teammates understand,” said Harrison, who graduated from Maryland in three years with a degree in American Studies and is in her second season at Saint Francis. “… They're a great team. They're going to compete until the buzzer sounds. You just have to remind your team, you come out here and play your hardest and leave it all on the court.

“Whatever happens, happens, but as long as you compete there is nothing more I can ask from my teammates.”

Harrison was a first team All-Northeast Conference pick last year at Saint Francis and her 3.53 steals per game ranked sixth in the country. This season, she is averaging 10.9 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.8 steals per game and earned her second straight NEC Defensive Player of the Year honor.

“It's really unique having her experiences on our campus,” Saint Francis coach Joe Haigh said. “You don't have that type of transfer at our level. So all the players in our locker room have always looked up to her. She's been through all this stuff. The rest of us haven't.

“Her reminder to the rest of the team is go out and play as hard as you can.”

One-two punch

Dawn Staley, coach of defending national champion South Carolina, wasn't necessarily thrilled with being the No. 2 seed in the Albany Regional, with UConn as the No. 1, mainly due to travel concerns.

But who's to say UConn coach Geno Auriemma was overly exuberant about having the champs in his bracket either?

“Every No. 1 seed (in the tournament) has a No. 2 seed that if the No. 2 seed wins you don't go 'Wow, that's a big upset,'” Auriemma said of his initial reaction on Selection Monday. “There's nothing easy at all about winning a national championship and at some point you have to beat some really, really good teams.”

Joining UConn as No. 1 seeds are Notre Dame in the Spokane Regional (with Oregon as the No. 2), Mississippi State in the Kansas City Regional (Texas is the No. 2) and Louisville in the Lexington Regional (Baylor No. 2).

“I think that's where we were looking is we had the one seeds, then we looked at teams like Baylor and Oregon and Texas and South Carolina,” Rhonda Lundin Bennett, chair of the Division I Women's Basketball Committee, said in a conference call. “We felt really comfortable with the ones we settled on, as well as the two line.”

Still, Staley told The Associated Press this week, the national championship will have to go through her four-time Southeasten Conference tournament champion Gamecocks.

Said Staley: “I like that.”

Quotable

The announcement came this week that former UConn great Diana Taurasi, a three-time national champion and current member of the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA, and wife Penny Taylor welcomed a son — Leo Michael Taurasi-Taylor — on March 1.

Said Auriemma: “The kid's either going to be a good player or Diana just needed a rebounder.”

And more

UConn said Friday that freshman guard Mikayla Coombs will miss the remainder of the season and is being treated for deep vein thrombosis. Coombs, the 2017 Gatorade Georgia Girls' Basketball Player of the Year, was averaging 6.7 minutes per game.

v.fulkerson@theday.com