The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Geno: UConn is ranked No. 2 on past, not on merit
BRISTOL — With the start of the regular season just around the corner, Geno Auriemma is certain of this: Nobody is spying on his team’s practices.
If they were, he joked, UConn certainly would not have landed where it did in the Associated Press preseason poll.
“We’re No. 2?” Auriemma quipped after the rankings were revealed Wednesday at ESPN Women’s Basketball Media Day. “That’s just by reputation. It’s certainly not because they have a secret video of our practices. We’re No. 2 on reputation. I don’t know that we’re No. 2 on merit, that’s for sure.
“We’re like the Sophia Loren of women’s basketball. We’ve looked good for a long time.”
UConn had been No. 1 in the AP or ESPN coaches preseason poll every year since 2012-13, when Brittany Griner was a senior at Baylor. This year, though, Notre Dame was tabbed a unanimous No. 1, followed by UConn, Oregon, Baylor and Louisville.
It was the Fighting Irish who broke UConn’s heart last March at the Final Four, advancing with a
91-89 overtime win on a miraculous last-second shot by Arike Ogunbowale. They went on to win their first national championship in 17 years. And the Huskies, well, they went back to the drawing board.
“Whenever you win a national championship and you’ve got everybody back, there’s a pretty good chance you don’t have as much uncertainty as other schools do,” Auriemma said. “When you lose three pros like we did, you’re going to have a lot of uncertainty. When you lose a kid you didn’t think you were going to lose, you’re going to have even more uncertainty.”
Auriemma insists this is not a vintage UConn team, partly because he didn’t expect his best post player, 6-foot-6 Azura Stevens, to bolt a year early for the WNBA. Stevens’ departure, coupled with the graduation of Kia Nurse and Gabby Williams, left Auriemma — now in his 34th season at the helm — with a thinner lineup than usual. It’s caused him to question whether the Huskies are not only deep enough, but strong enough around the basket to win big.
“If you look at our starting five, you go, ‘Well, you have three really good players and you found four and five,” said Auriemma, who returns Katie Lou Samuelson, Napheesa Collier and Crystal Dangerfield as starters. “It’s the first time we’ve been in that situation in a long, long time. Think about it. I’m thinking it’s probably since Diana (Taurasi’s) junior year that we started two kids that have never started a game at UConn. That might be the first time before today.
“… I can remember when Diana was a junior, we started two freshmen. But we could’ve started me and you.”
Taurasi’s junior year was 2002-03. Those two freshmen were Ann Strother and Barbara Turner. The Huskies went 37-1 and beat Tennessee for their fourth national championship.
So, maybe, everything will work out for the Huskies?
“If you were replacing who left with another junior and senior, you might have less uncertainty,” Auriemma said. “But the fact is that that’s not the case.”
There is far less uncertainty in South Bend, Ind. Notre Dame returns four players who averaged over 14 points per game last year. And that doesn’t include All-American forward Brianna Turner, who sat out last season while recovering from a torn ACL in her left knee.
“We’re going to be able to score,” Ogunbowale said. “All five starters can score 30 on any given night. It’s definitely going to be tough for defenders. … We can outscore anybody, but if we don’t get stops, they can keep up with us. That’s definitely what we need to focus on.”
Ogunbowale hit not one, but two game-winning shots last March. She knocked down a jumper with a second to go in overtime to beat UConn, then two nights later, beat Mississippi State at the buzzer to win a national title. She’s seen replays of both shots countless times.
“I watch it like every time I get tagged (on Twitter) in it,” she said. “I don’t Google it myself and go watch it, but I get tagged probably like two or three times a week. It comes across my timeline probably every week.”
Those shots are now history — both literally and figuratively. The Huskies, of course, would rather forget them. Their goal, as it always has been under Auriemma, is to create their own legacy in March.
“We pretty much have three constants,” Auriemma said, discussing his roster. “Pheesa, Lou and Crystal are pretty constant. We get the same thing from them every single day. Some days are better than others, but every day it’s really, really good. We’ll get three or four days that are great from, say, Megan (Walker) and four days that are great from, say, Christyn (Williams). And then we’ll get some great contributions from Kyla (Irwin), Mikayla (Coombs) and Molly (Bent). Olivia (Nelson-Ododa) will have some great moments.”
The Huskies have learned the last two seasons that nothing is guaranteed. It’s why this offseason they’ve emphasized trying to correct their problems now rather than later.
“I feel like the approach is a little different in the fact that last year we said we were hungry and we said we wanted to get back,” Samuelson said.