Hartford’s Valley captures elusive first win

Last Tuesday, the night before the curtains closed on her first season as a Division I head coach, Morgan Valley received a text from Geno Auriemma.

“Let’s get this first one,” he told her.

Valley wasn’t supposed to win, but she did.

Her Hartford Hawks stunned first-place Stony Brook 70-67 at Chase Arena, avoiding the stain of being the country’s only winless team on their 29th and final try of 2019-20.

Afterward, amid a sea of jubilation, Valley uncorked a bottle of Dom Perignon that she had received as a gift from her friend and former UConn teammate Diana Taurasi several months earlier. Her plan was to open it after her first victory, but she waited … and waited … and waited as it collected dust in the corner of her office.

“It kind of teaches you what I’ve known for a long time,” Valley said. “You don’t always get what you want when you want it. You’ve just got to keep working and eventually something good will happen.”

Through it all, Valley stayed patient. She had no other choice. Her roster was regularly in flux. Two top scorers left shortly after she arrived. Another went down with a season-ending knee injury. She went into some games with only six available players, which limited what she could do.

“We were just really, really young,” Valley said. “Everything was different. The style of play was completely different. I wasn’t going to press full-court, I wasn’t going to just fall back into a 3-2 zone, most of their offense came from their defense.

“It just didn’t click. We worked every day. There were times in practice where I thought, ‘Oh

Valley