UConn women eye 25th straight NCAA first round win

The news barely caused a stir in Connecticut when the decision was made to expand the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament from 48 to 64 teams beginning in 1994.

UConn had yet to secure any of its record 11 national championships, and in three of its five previous NCAA tournament experiences, the Huskies didn’t win a game.

That seems like ancient history. With this being the 25th tournament with a 64-team field, UConn is the only program to advance to the second round in each of the previous 24 events. The opportunity to make it a perfect 25 for 25 comes on Saturday at 11 a.m. when the top-seeded Huskies host No. 16 seed Saint Francis (Pa.).

UConn coach Geno Auriemma, who has won more games in the NCAA tournament than any other Division I women’s basketball coach, is fully aware that there are some who will attempt to minimize that accomplishment.

“You have really good players, you should be able to win a first-round game against a team that is seeded 16th,” Auriemma said.

This is the 20th time in the last 25 tournaments that the Huskies are a No. 1 seed and the 11th time they are the top overall seed. The 1997-98 Harvard squad is the only No. 16 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the women’s Division I tournament and that came against a Stanford team that lost two key players before the start of the tournament.

Still, if winning in the first round for 24 going on 25 years is such a routine event, the Huskies wouldn’t be the only program to accomplish that feat.

“It goes back to what are we trying to do in a non-conference game in November ... are you mailing it in and winning because of your talent or are you doing things that end up benefiting you in March?” Auriemma said.

“I’d like to think that generally speaking, it’s not always the case. Generally speaking that once you create a certain culture, once you create a certain level of commitment that your program has a pretty good chance of getting to the regional, winning two games,” Auriemma said. “Beyond that if you have the right players and you have a couple of studs that carry you the rest of the way, I’d like to think that your program the way it is set up, the way you practice, the way you handle yourself during the regular season puts you in position to get yourself two wins in the NCAA tournament. So maybe that is as much of an explanation that I can come up with other than we are more talented than the teams we play in the first round.”

UConn has not only not lost in the first round in a 64-team tournament, but the average margin of victory is 46.8 points with just two games decided by fewer than 25 points.

An indication of how impressive the Huskies’ staying power is can be illustrated by the fact that six of the teams in the Sweet 16 in the 2008 tournament failed to make this year’s event or that Penn State, the No. 1 overall seed 14 years ago, and North Carolina, the top overall seed in the 2006 and 2007 tournaments, were not among the teams in this year’s field.

None of that matters to the players on this year’s UConn team who are only focused on playing the Northeast Conference tournament champions in the NCAA opener for the third time in the last four seasons.

“We don’t think about it as playing to another team’s level, we think about it as playing to our standards every single game,” UConn All-American senior forward Gabby Williams said. “We have our own personal (expectations). Of course we have our scout, how we want to play against them, but we also have things we want to run and that is one of the things we want to do every single night.”

Williams, the reigning Division I women’s national defensive player of the year, and fellow senior Kia Nurse will be setting their sights on making life as difficult as possible for Saint Francis junior guard Jessica Kovatch, the NCAA Division I women’s basketball leader this season with 141 3-pointers made.

“She can score in a number of ways, especially from the 3-point line,” Nurse said. “She does a great job of getting into her shot quickly from anywhere on the court. Her range is pretty deep and she does a good job of drawing contact, trying to get into the defense so it will be a matter of team defense.”

Kovatch, whose 24.9 points per game average is the second highest among women’s Division I players, has scored 70 points in her last two

Associated Press file photo This is the 20th time in the last 25 NCAA tournaments that UConn coach Geno Auriemma and the Huskies are a No. 1 seed and the 11th time they are the top overall seed.