Paige Bueckers, UConn send immediate March Madness message to other title hopefuls

As is tradition, the UConn Huskies are in the NCAA Tournament and have a legitimate shot at winning the National Championship. They dominated the regular season, going 32-3 overall and 18-0 in Big East conference play, but the conference being as weak as it was wound up bumping UConn down to a No. 2 seed in the Spokane 4 Region.

By placing the Huskies as a No. 2 seed, the committee essentially made the assumption that they should not be considered among the four favorites to win the National Championship. Well, if Saturday's tournament opener was any indication, the committee was wrong, and every program should be terrified.

The Huskies, matched up against No. 15 Arkansas State, pulled off a kind of win you don't even see in video games. The final score was 103-34. The Huskies won by 69 points, and it felt as if they could have easily won by more.

For those hoping to compete against these Huskies for a National Championship, this performance that the Huskies put together should be concerning.

Paige Bueckers, Huskies, establish themselves as legitimate title contenders with Arkansas State thrashing

I get it, the Red Wolves were a No. 15 seed, but c'mon - how do you not read into a 69 point win? The Red Wolves were never expected to come close to beating the Huskies, but they looked like a team that didn't even belong in the tournament at all, which isn't really the case.

After the first quarter, UConn led by a score of 34-5. That's right, in ten minutes of action, the Huskies scored as many points as the Red Wolves did in 40 minutes, and did so while holding their competition to a total of five points. At the end of the first half, the score was 66-16. The only quarter that was somewhat competitive was the fourth quarter, and UConn had already benched its starters by then.

The Huskies held the Red Wolves to 17.1 percent from the field all day. They were 12-for-70 from the field and 6-for-40 (15 percent) from three-point range. One of those six threes hit was at the final buzzer when the Huskies were not playing defense. Defending like that while also scoring over 100 points in essentially three quarters is beyond impressive.

Perhaps the most impressive feat of this win for the Huskies was the fact that Paige Bueckers, their leading scorer in the regular season, was somewhat of a non-factor. She played well, tallying 11 points on 5-for-9 shooting and four assists in just 22 minutes, but Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong were the team's high scorers, dropping 27 and 20 points, respectively. They would've won comfortably without her.

Again, I know that this was a game against a No. 15 seed, but with how the Huskies played on Saturday, they proved they can beat anyone in the country. This kind of showing was dominant enough to send a message to other title hopefuls that they're legit and must be taken seriously, if that wasn't clear already.