UConn has piled up miles with schedule
The Connecticut women will step into their record 11th straight NCAA Final Four on Friday night against Notre Dame at Nationwide Arena, and what a trip it has been.
To Columbus? Well, yes. And standing 36-0 in contention for a record 12th national championship? That, too.
But the Huskies haven’t been home in nine days, having traveled here from Albany, New York, where they won a regional title on Monday night. That’s a fitting last trip for a season that started with a 10-day tour of Italy in late summer and has taken them to all four corners of the continental U.S. and many places in between (not to mention Toronto). There was even an opening win over Stanford at Nationwide Arena in November.
They’ve come a long way under coach Geno Auriemma since he took over for the 198586 season.
“My first year, what would be the most exotic trip? Pittsburgh?” Auriemma quipped Thursday. “It was like we were back in … the Revolutionary War. We have to go to Fort Pitt and fight off the French and Indians or something. … And we bused everywhere, and everyone threw $10 on the table and said, ‘OK, how much can we eat with that total for the whole team?’
“It seems like almost another century ago, and now this year we’re in Europe for 10 days in August, we’re at UCLA, then we fly up to Oregon and then we go to Nevada. We’re in Florida a couple times. We’re in Texas a couple times. We go to Chicago. I mean, it’s ridiculous.”
They can afford to go places, the spoils from being the top program the past two decades. There’s another payoff.
“Being able to go into a gym that’s not your own and still perform well is huge,” sophomore guard Crystal Dangerfield said. “I think that’s why our coaches set up the schedule the way they do. It prepares us.
“And I think we even make our practices hard enough to where, whatever the situation we’re in, we’ll be OK with it.”
Auriemma said his players have not been fazed by a season that has seen them play just 14 home games, and six of those were in nearby Hartford, not their true home of Storrs.
“I don’t know what makes them go ‘Wow!’, except this does. … Nothing compares to this,” Auriemma said of the Final Four trip.
Junior forward Katie Lou Samuelson said the Huskies were reminded of that the hard way last year when, riding a record 111-game win streak and four straight national titles, they suffered a stunning semifinal loss to Mississippi State in overtime.
“Traveling to the Final Four is always different because … there are so many things that can distract you from what’s at hand,” Samuelson said. “And I think that’s something that we didn’t do as good of a job last year, being focused and understanding that when it’s time to work in practice and shoot-arounds, we need to block everything else out.”