The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
For unbeaten Huskies, it’s business as usual
UConn enters Final Four for third straight season with perfect record
BRIDGEPORT » Even while Geno Auriemma was coaching perhaps the best recruiting class of all time, he would occasionally take a peek into his crystal ball and ponder what life was going to be like following the departure of All-Americans Moriah Jefferson, Breanna Stewart and Morgan Tuck.
One such time came late last season when he rattled off the list of non-conference opponents on the 2016-17 schedule and began to count the losses. There was almost the sound of glee in Auriemma’s voice as he suggested to the assembled media that they would have something different to write about. It is a conversation that certainly those returning players had heard countless times before that day.
Fast forward 12 or 13 months later and the Huskies head into the Final Four undefeated just as they did a season ago and two seasons before that.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Auriemma said after UConn defeated Oregon to secure a berth in the Final Four for a record 10th year in a row. “I didn’t know who was going to be responsible for any of this stuff. Maybe that’s the way it needed to be this year, so
FROM PAGE 1 that they all had to depend on each other instead of all depending on one person. They never were allowed to take a break because they all had to be there every night or we weren’t going to be able to do what we’ve done.”
Auriemma pushed to have the American Athletic Conference schedule to be cut from 18 to 16 games to give his team two additional non-conference games. Then he put together probably the most challenging non-conference schedule in program history.
Eight of the other 15 teams to host subregionals in the NCAA Division I tournament were on UConn’s schedule. If Auriemma could have scheduled the other seven teams, he likely would have done so. Going undefeated was the last thing Auriemma was concerned with and that is the case each and every year. The Hall of Fame coach is more concerned about the process than a tabulation of the most recent win streak. He wanted to test his team early and often, so if that meant a few losses here and there, so be it.
The Huskies held on for dear life in the season opener at Florida State just three days before hosting Baylor. For a program that hadn’t lost back-to-back games since 1993, it was a realistic possibility that they could have opened the season at 0-2, something that has not transpired at UConn since the 1982-83 campaign.
A funny thing happened, the Huskies not only did not lose back-toback games, they did not lose either game.
The Huskies also won at Notre Dame, at Maryland and games in Connecticut against Texas and South Carolina. The Huskies faced six teams thought to have realistic opportunities to spoil the Huskies’ unblemished record. Well, only South Carolina still has a chance to accomplish that, but the rematch wouldn’t take place until the national title game.
The roles that were not defined when the Huskies struggled to seal the deal against Florida State in November began to come into focus as UConn posted one victory after another.
“After the first game we knew we had a really long season ahead of us,” said sophomore forward Napheesa Collier, UConn’s leading scorer and rebounder. “We thought it was going to be different than it was, everybody else thought it was going to be different than it was but we worked really hard this year and it showed during the games.”
Undefeated chatter didn’t start when the Huskies left Tallahassee with a two-point win or topped Baylor. It did not pick up steam after wins over Notre Dame, Texas or South Carolina either.
“After the Florida State game the biggest thing on my mind was, ‘are we going to die at practice?’ Then we had Baylor, so back then I don’t think any of us were thinking about anything to do with Dallas or the Final Four,” UConn sophomore Katie Lou Samuelson said. “That is the biggest thing that kind of made this possible, we really learned how to take each game and focus on it specifically because we knew it was completely possible for us to lose that game. We wanted to be ready and every single night we went in there and that kind of prepared us to get far, prepared us for playing each game like it is our last.”
Now the Huskies get to play Mississippi State in the national semifinal. There will be plenty of talk leading into the game about how the Huskies completely overwhelmed the Bulldogs in the Sweet 16 a season ago.
The Huskies led by 68 with 7:02 to play en route to a 98-38 victory. Nine of the 10 players who saw at least 10 minutes of playing time in that loss are back and playing similar minutes this season. Still, this appears to be a better team than the one crushed by the Huskies. Teaira McCowan, a 6-foot-7 sophomore, has made impressive strides, junior Victoria Vivians is a dynamic offensive player and what more can be said about Morgan William’s 41-point, sevenassist, zero-turnover game in the Elite Eight win over Baylor?
“That’s not the same Mississippi State team we played last year here,” Auriemma said. “That’s a whole different team. They have a lot of the same players, but that’s a whole different team. Going into the NCAA Tournament, I thought Baylor had the best chance of winning based on if you check all the boxes and say, here’s what you need to win, you need size, you need experience, you need athletic ability, you need good guard play, you have to have depth.’ So when you check off all the boxes, you go, wow, they’re the only team that has all that. For Mississippi State to keep answering and keep answering and keep answering and keep answering the entire (45) minutes, that was an amazing performance.”