Raising the stakes
Reaching 14th straight Final Four won’t be easy
BRIDGEPORT — The UConn women’s basketball team has reached what coach Geno Auriemma calls the most challenging game of any NCAA Tournament, a regional final, and the irony within that statement is that the Huskies hardly ever lose on this stage.
Sometimes they even breeze right through, onto the Final Four as if tickets were booked in October. That’s what happened the last time UConn played an Elite Eight game in Bridgeport, with UConn blowing out Oregon by 48 points in 2017 and pushing its winning streak to 111.
But past success doesn’t necessarily dictate degree of difficulty. If the second-seeded Huskies are to defeat top-seeded NC State Monday night at Total Mortgage Arena, it won’t be because of pedigree or reputation or habit.
It will be, as it always is, because a UConn player, or players, takes over the little chamber of athletic and emotional pressure that feels new each and every time. The Final Four is a destination that dangles the sport’s biggest reward. The regional is a last step, one taken through different strengths.
“I think your program can only get you so far, and this is probably the end of the road unless somebody steps up and plays spectacularly well,” Auriemma said Sunday. “Who that is, I don’t know, because we haven’t had our team together except for the last three or four weeks. Could be anybody at this point.”
Could be an NC State player, of course. Maybe this becomes, say,
Elissa Cunane’s shining moment.
The ball goes up around 7 p.m. Monday. The winner heads to Minneapolis for a national semifinal.
The program resumes are vastly different. The team resumes are not.
NC State is 32-3, with losses to South Carolina, Georgia and Notre Dame. The Wolfpack have won the past three ACC Tournaments and are 82-10 in that span. UConn is 84-10 over the same period.
NC State has been knocked out of its past three NCAA Tournaments in the Sweet 16 and got over that hump Saturday with a comeback victory over the Irish. The Wolfpack have not been to the Final Four since 1998 — when it defeated UConn in a regional final in Dayton.
“We’re fortunate we’ve got a veteran team, and they’ve all been here several times,” said coach Wes Moore. “A lot of [players] came back for this very reason, to try to rewrite this chapter, so I’m excited for them. We know it’s a great challenge. Geno has built something really special here, and obviously he’s got a lot of great players, a lot of talent. We know it’s going to be a big challenge for our program, but we’re excited about the opportunity, and trying to take one more step.”
UConn has had runs to Final Fours and national championships with Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart and others who have blazed and paved the trail to the Elite Eight and the top of ladders to snip nets the following weekend.
The decimated-by-injury Hus
kies are in a familiar spot but a unique situation this time, though.
A new starting lineup is just starting to gel. Sophomore Paige Bueckers did lead UConn to a 13th consecutive Final Four last year, through a pandemic and the Texas bubble, but she’s still limited by a knee injury that robbed her of two-thirds of the season. Seniors Christyn Williams and Olivia Nelson-Ododa do have a wealth of NCAA Tournament experience, but it runs short through the rest of the roster.
Azzi Fudd, of course, is brand new to everything. She was 5 years old when UConn’s Final Four streak began.
“Sitting here right now, it doesn’t go, ‘We always win that game,’” Auriemma said. “You still have to go out and win that game, and whether this is your first time or whether it’s your however many time, this game is the same.
“I think your program, the way it’s set up and the way you do things, the tradition that you have, the culture that you’ve established, can get you to this weekend a lot of times. But to get out of this weekend, I think you do need one player, two preferably — or when we had Stewie, three — that are going to play great and they’re the one that gets you to next weekend. And then if you’re fortunate enough to get to the next weekend, those guys better play great again if you want to win.”
UConn is 21-5 in the Elite Eight and hasn’t lost at this point since 2007.
Usually it is clear that the Huskies have the player or players to hand the ball to and get out of the way. That’s not how 2021-22 has gone. This year is more of a mystery, which only ratchets up the demands on players for a team with an identity of being more wellrounded and even still in an experimental stage.
This is the last chance for seniors to enhance their legacy and make sure the program bar remains where it is. It is the first signature moment for a Bueckers/Fudd era that the sport expects such great things out of. This is about Auriemma holding things together for months, UConn overcoming the most trying circumstances. This is about the first official “March Madness” women’s tournament, about rebounding from a pandemic while remaining in full stride.
This could be about the end to one of the most impressive streaks in college sports history. UConn has never entered the Final Four with five losses. It will have to.
“I think the more times you’re in this situation, the more you realize how many people are not fortunate enough to be in this situation often,” Auriemma said. “So you realize how, when you look back, difficult it must have been to get here this many times in a row. And even more, how difficult it’s been to win 13 of them in a row.”
It just hasn’t always looked that way, is all. UConn squeaked out a victory over Baylor last season, one that included a controversial non-call while the Huskies defended in the closing seconds. The 2020 tournament didn’t take place.
The year before, UConn edged Louisville by 7 in Albany — the only time during the streak the Huskies have reached a Final Four as a No. 2 seed. In 2018, also in Albany, UConn blew out South Carolina by 29. Afterward, Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley said, sarcastically, of UConn headed to another Final Four, “Now all is well in women’s basketball.”
The Elite Eight is really where the work often feels like it begins, the hardest work, sometimes the most telling work.
The Huskies have lost in the Final Four semifinals each the past four tournaments — opportunities ultimately lost, opportunities first earned.
“I want them to treat Monday’s game exactly the way we treated Saturday’s and exactly the way we treated last Monday’s,” Auriemma said of players. “Hopefully they don’t have to do anything different than they’ve been doing, and we’ll take our chances. It should be good enough, and if it’s not, we just lost to a better team. That’s all.”