The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Irish, Huskies renew competitive rivalry
Teams to clash in Final Four for a record seventh time
COLUMBUS, Ohio — There was a time when it was unthinkable to even suggest another women’s collegiate basketball rivalry could replace those classic UConn-Tennessee showdowns.
However, a mere 11 years since the last meeting between those superpowers, UConn is about to make history with another familiar foe.
When UConn and Notre Dame square off in Friday’s second national semifinal, it will be the record seventh Final Four showdown between the two former conference rivals.
“That was definitely a lot of fun being in the Big East, playing them,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “I know two years in row a we played them four times. Just really created a great rivalry. We had some good games during that rivalry.”
UConn and Tennessee have played in the Final Four six times, with the Huskies winning the national championship games in 1995, 2000, ’03 and ’04. This will mark the fifth time that the Final Four meeting between the Huskies and Fighting Irish has taken place in the semifinal round.
There have been two games with a national title on the line and seven others with the winner securing the conference tournament crown. There have been many head-to-head recruiting battles as well.
“When we play Notre Dame during the regular season now, it always seems to be a matchup between top five teams in the country,” UConn coach Geno
Auriemma said. “They have a slew of All-Americans on their team, and so do we. They’ve got a passionate fan base and so do we, so it makes for a great rivalry. Rivalries start going in ebbs and flows. We beat them a lot for a long time. They won a national championship in 2001. Then we kind of had our way for a long time, and then they kind of had their way for a couple of years, three or four years it might have been, when Skylar (Diggins) was there.”
UConn won the first 11 games in the series before Notre Dame’s programdefining win on Jan. 15, 2001.
Two and a half months later, the Fighting Irish
came storming back to knock off the Huskies in the Final Four en route to the national title. There were wins by Notre Dame in 2004 and ’05.
Then the tide really turned, with Diggins, Kayla McBride and the rest of the star-studded Fighting Irish winning seven out of eight games.
Notre Dame topped UConn in the national semifinals in both 2011 and ’12, marking the first time the same program ended UConn’s season in back-toback years since Tennessee accomplished the feat in 1996 and ’97.
UConn’s dominance has returned recently with the Huskies winning the last six games in the series.
In the most recent meeting, the visiting Fighting Irish led UConn by 11 points with nine minutes
left to play, but Notre Dame missed 12 of its final 14 shots while Azurá Stevens had 10 of her 17 points in the final 8:41 as UConn rallied for the 80-71 win.
“Gabby (Williams) was on the bench the whole second half, and (Katie) Lou (Samuelson) was on the bench most of the fourth quarter,” Auriemma said. “”We had some guys step up and make some huge plays to beat a really, really good team, a great team, actually.
“I wonder if we had been on the road, would we have lost that game? I don’t know. But we were at home, and we needed some players to make some huge plays that don’t necessarily make those plays. That made me think we have some other things going for us other than just the players that everybody says are the best players.”
The unfortunate part of the rematch is that Lili Thompson, who had nine points in that game and hit the 3-pointer to put Notre Dame up by 11, joined the list of injured Fighting Irish players.
Notre Dame has plenty of star power but injuries leave the Fighting Irish without the complete roster McGraw was hoping to have this season.
“We keep shaking our heads,” said McGraw of missing Brianna Turner, Mychal Johnson, Mikayla Vaughn and Thompson for all or parts of this season. “I think I’m kind of torn between crying and laughing. It means so much.”