Geno Auriemma reflects on UConn’s first trip to the Final Four 30 years ago in New Orleans, admitting the Huskies should have been more serious. That hasn’t happened since.
— This trip to the Final Four for the UConn women's basketball team comes 30 years after its first Final Four appearance in 1991.
UConn beat N.C. State and Clemson in the regional in Philadelphia that year to reach the Final Four in New Orleans. The Huskies, led by the program's first All-American in Kerry Bascom, played Virginia in the national semifinals, coming up short by a score of 61-55. Tennessee topped Virginia for the championship the next day.
"What do I remember the most 30 years ago?" UConn coach Geno Auriemma said recently, asked to recall Final Four No. 1. "First of all, I can't believe it's been 30 years.
"I remember that team having just a blast. Everything for them was fun, everything for them was this brand new experience that was so cool. Getting on a bus and driving to Philadelphia for the regionals was like the greatest thing that every happened. Going out to dinner, oh, my God . ... Everything for those kids was like a dream come true."
Auriemma's team is now in its 21st Final Four and its 13th straight. UConn is playing a team in Arizona which is making its first appearance. The Huskies take on Arizona at 9:30 p.m. Friday at the Alamodome (ESPN).
Auriemma said of that first trip that he thinks he probably let the players have a little bit too much fun. It wasn't until UConn's next trip to the Final Four in 1995 that the Huskies won their first national championship in Minneapolis.
"(When we got to New Orleans), everything was fun. Everything was new and exciting," he said. "... Until halftime of the Virginia game when I was (ticked). I said, 'Damn, I shoulda made them take this more seriously.' So the next time we went to the Final Four, I got it right."
Memories from the River Walk
Former UConn All-American Tina Charles, now of the WNBA's Washington Mystics, was a senior at UConn when the Huskies won the 2010 national championship in San Antonio,
edging Stanford 53-47 after trailing 20-12 at halftime.
Charles, in San Antonio for a fourday training camp for the U.S. Women's National Team, was asked in a video conference this week what she remembers of the city.
"When I think of San Antonio, I think about my senior year," Charles said. "Us being down at halftime and just what all those practices leading up to that game meant. Coach Auriemma would always put us in positions where the practices were harder than the games, where we would be down against the practice players and have to come out on the other side of it.
"And winning the game ... I have a lot of memories here, a lot of great times on the River Walk afterward. Hopefully the players on the team this year can have that same feeling that I had here and pull it off."
Staley: 'I love it'
Speaking of the U.S. National Team, the head coach of that team, Dawn Staley, is in San Antonio but unable to participate in the USA Basketball training camp for a very good reason.
Staley is also the head coach at South Carolina, which reached the Final Four and will play Stanford in Friday's opener at 6 p.m. All teams in the NCAA tournament remain in a bubble to guard against COVID-19, meaning Staley can't bounce back and forth between the two squads.
Staley, however, said the American team, getting reading to compete in the Tokyo Olympics later in the year, is in capable hands with assistant coaches Dan Hughes (head coach of the Seattle Storm), Cheryl Reeve (head coach of the Minnesota Lynx) and former UConn great Jen Rizzotti.
If she could coach both the U.S. team and the Gamecocks at the same time?
"I really enjoy basketball," Staley said Thursday. "A lot of what I do is basketball related. I take the good, the bad, the ugly of the game because I love it. The more that's piled on my plate, the better for me."