UConn women's basketball

The UConn women’s basketball team has struggled to take care of the ball for the better part of the last three weeks. It has been the worst stretch of the season for the third-ranked Huskies.

The players agree that the recent high number of turnovers is a considerable problem entering Saturday’s game against No. 14 Georgetown at Gampel Pavilion (4 p.m.; SNY). And judging by the level of sarcasm from UConn coach Geno Auriemma on the topic, this is not sitting well with him either.

“No, I’m not concerned about it,’’ Auriemma said. “I don’t mind when we have more turnovers than field goals. I think that’s an opportunity for us to even out the playing field. We’ve won so many games in a row. We’ve won so many Big East championships in a row. I think it’s an opportunity for us to give other teams a chance to win. I think it’s something that we owe to the rest of the league. So Saturday we’re going to continue to throw the ball away and make dumb mistakes because we feel like it’s good for the game. It keeps the game competitive and it helps us build parity in our league and around the country. So we’re instructing our players to throw it away as many opportunities as they can. And they’re listening to us.’’

UConn (22-2, 9-1 Big East) is averaging 15.0 turnovers per game. However, the average is 17.7 over the last six games.

Led by a career-high six turnovers by sophomore center Stefanie Dolson, the Huskies committed 22 in Tuesday’s 56-46 win at No. 20 Louisville. It was their second highest total this season behind the 27 they committed in an overtime-loss at No. 2 Notre Dame Jan. 7.

UConn has committed at least 18 turnovers in four of the last six games, twice exceeding 20 in the last three games. The Huskies had committed 18 turnovers just once and averaged 14.1 over the first 18 games this season when they had 13 or less in eight games.

“It’s a huge concern,’’ junior guard Caroline Doty said. “Even in practice we’re turning the ball over. It gets frustrating after a while. You’re turning the ball over and it’s contagious. And it just deflates your confidence. The coaches are mad. And then you get frustrated and then you’re teammates get frustrated. It’s just not pretty. So the fact that we had 27 turnovers in a game, that’s unacceptable. And it reflects on what we do in practice too. So we just need to work on it. That’s our No. 1 thing because we’re our biggest monster right now.’’

Tiffany Hayes and Bria Hartley each have 19 turnovers in this recent span of futility. Dolson has 16. Kelly Faris has 14. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis has 11.

Doty, who continues to be a stabilizing presence offensively, has just six. And Kiah Stokes has five.

“It’s a huge problem right now,’’ Faris said. “Obviously, in practice it’s always a problem. But we kind of eventually started doing better in games and now it’s back to 20-some turnovers a game. So that’s what he’s sitting here doing the last couple practices is just making us sit there and go through and getting passes inside and being able to catch it. It’s frustrating. I know it’s killing him because we work on it almost the entire practice and then we get in games and we get frazzled and throw the ball away. There’s no explanation for it. There’s no excuse for it, other than just lack of focus.’’

It will not get any easier offensively for UConn, who is averaging just 61.0 points over the last three games, against Georgetown (19-5, 8-3). The Hoyas are forcing an average of 23.2 turnovers this season. They have forced at least 20 in 18 games and at least 30 three times.

The Huskies struggled in three games against the Hoyas last season, averaging 59.7 points and 21.7 turnovers. UConn committed 26 and 21 turnovers, respectively, in the first two meetings. That represented the highest number of turnovers in a game for the Huskies.

UConn then committed 18 turnovers and needed to rally from a seven-point deficit in the NCAA Philadelphia regional semifinals.

“We know from last year playing Georgetown multiple times that they’re going press and they’re going to force turnovers,’’ Hartley said. “And I know the first time we played them last year it definitely wasn’t the type game we wanted to have. And we had a lot of turnovers. I know we want to improve on that and we know down the stretch going into March and going into the end of the season that one of the things is our turnovers. And we want to take care of the ball.’’

UConn has six games remaining in the regular season. The time to win championships is at hand.

The Huskies realize fully that if they do not limit their turnovers they could be denied their chance to win a sixth straight Big East regular season championship, a fifth straight conference tournament championship and an NCAA record-tying eighth national championship in the weeks to come.

“I think it’s just that part of the season,’’ Faris said. “It’s getting towards the end and everybody’s kind of getting beat up. Everybody from all the teams are like that. And we’ve got to learn how to handle it better. Teams are going to start putting the pressure on us and start getting in our face because they’re going to watch games like (Louisville) and think, `OK, that’s all you’ve got to do to them and then they’ll back down.’ That’s not a good thing for us. We’ve got to start turning it around and thinking, `OK, we have to be able to accept that pressure and put it back on them.’ Those should be the good games for us. The second people put pressure on us we should run them up and down the floor and get transition buckets. We do in spurts and then we kind of back down. So we’ve got to kind of keep working on that. And I know that’s what we’ve been doing.’’

Rich