The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
UConn hitting the right notes heading into NCAAs
UNCASVILLE — When Geno Auriemma has the best team in the country, he’s not afraid to tell the world. The same goes for when he doesn’t.
This, he’ll tell you, isn’t one of those years when everything is preordained. His UConn Huskies are 29-3, on the doorstep of their 15th straight 30-win season after another American Athletic Conference championship, but aren’t the favorites. Either South Carolina, Baylor or Oregon will wear that name tag instead. And he’s fine with that.
“It’s kind of exciting in that respect. It’s kind of exciting,” Auriemma said this weekend. “Nothing’s given, nothing’s taken for granted. Nothing’s assumed.”
The Huskies won their seventh and final AAC title on Monday, walloping Cincinnati 87-53 to finish 139-0 all-time in the league. The postgame celebration included a few buckets of red, white and blue confetti being spilled, but no ceremonial cutting of the nets.
They chose to stick with tradition and wait, for they have bigger plans. Auriemma and Co. have their
sights set on another Final Four, the logical goal in a spectacular season that has been both gratifying and daunting for myriad reasons.
There have been emotional hurdles, physical hurdles, and a series of draining games. The latest gut punch came Sunday when Kyla Irwin, a key rotational player and wellrespected senior, fractured her elbow. Irwin, who’s known to rap in the locker room before every game to get teammates hyped, called in before and after the AAC final via FaceTime.
“This year was obviously harder than in years past,” senior Crystal Dangerfield said. “Maybe not the (AAC) championship game, but the regular season and things like that, these were a long three days.”
The Huskies usually know the path required to get to the Final Four, but this year’s different in that regard. With no regional in Bridgeport, Albany, N.Y., Trenton, N.J., or Kingston, R.I. — or anywhere else within driving distance — the Huskies are liable to land anywhere on Selection Monday. That could mean traveling as far as Portland, Ore., a 3,000-mile journey from Storrs.
“Most years, we work our butt off so we can stay home,” Auriemma said. “That’s the whole point of the regular season. So, anybody who goes, ‘Oh, you always play close to home,’ no kidding. That’s the whole point of being undefeated and being a No. 1, No. 1. We’ve been able to do that a lot.
“This year, even if we did and we were the No. 1, No. 1 we’re still not anywhere close to home. So you’ve just got to go where they tell you to go and you’ve got to play who they tell you to play.
“I don’t go to the selection show on TV and go, ‘I hope we’re in this bracket, I hope these teams are in our bracket’ because it always backfires. I just sit there and watch.”
At this point, that’s all the Huskies can do, really. Win two NCAA tournament games at Gampel Pavilion, then fly somewhere and take their chances. The Huskies won’t be a No. 1 seed, but Auriemma doesn’t care. He feels good about where they’re at, saying the ball movement they’ve exhibited of late is a sign they’re peaking.
“The entire season has been just up and down, and we’ve had games where we’ve had to slug it out, and it just looks painful, it’s like pulling teeth. But (Monday) it was fun,” Dangerfield said.
Notable: UConn-bound Paige Bueckers was named to the Naismith High School All-America First Team. Mir McLean, Amari DeBerry and Saylor Poffenbarger were honorable mention.