The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Dailey’s first championship as a player to be chronicled in new documentary
In 1982, three years before she and Geno Auriemma landed at UConn, Chris Dailey captured her first national championship. Dailey was a senior at Rutgers, a respected co-captain on a team that upset Texas for the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women title.
There were bits and pieces of the game that stuck with her over time, but it wasn’t until two years ago that Dailey and her teammates reunited on campus with a film crew to relive the 83-77 victory in its entirety.
The game was never aired on television, and only recently did footage make it onto YouTube — but that’s about to change.
Dailey and the rest of Rutgers’ 1981-82 championship team will be immortalized in an ongoing documentary, “Forgotten Champions,” which is set to premiere Saturday at 8 p.m. on the Big Ten Network. Members of the Rutgers community and other prominent figures from the sport will be live-tweeting during the broadcast.
“I had never watched it before,” Dailey said in a phone interview. “That was (two) years ago. They filmed us watching it. They did a group filming of us talking about the team and the year.”
“Besides playing in it, they had never seen the game, nor has anyone really,” explained one of the producers, Geoff Sadow.
Texas was riding a 32game win streak, but Rutgers — led by head coach Theresa Grentz and six seniors, including Dailey, who started because of an injury — toppled the favorites at the famed Palestra in Philadelphia for their first — and to date, only — national title. It was the first year the NCAA also sponsored a women’s basketball tournament, which Louisiana
Tech won. The AIAW was discontinued shortly after.
“We were talented, don’t get me wrong, but we weren’t the most talented team. But we were the best team,” Dailey said. “We weren’t the most talented individual players, but we were the best team.”
A few months after seeing the replay for the first time, Dailey — Auriemma’s longtime associate head coach — reconvened with members of the team. They met at the Palestra, where more interviews were filmed.
“We also re-enacted some
of the game,” Dailey noted. “It was a really fun time, although the Palestra still doesn’t have any air conditioning. So it was hotter than you-know-what.”
Dailey averaged 3.1 points and 2.6 rebounds across 30 games in 1982 for the Lady Knights (25-7). She was enshrined in the school’s Hall of Fame in 1992.
“Chris was somebody who was all about the team,” Grentz said. “I think the things that you see today are the same things we all saw in the early ’80s.
“She has obviously brought that to another level at UConn.”
COMING FULL CIRCLE
History has a way of repeating itself. At least Dailey thinks so.
Let’s let her explain. “Fast forward to 1991, our very first Final Four (with UConn), we were going to the regional. The regional was held where? The Palestra.
“We walk in, and we’re walking in with a guide and they’re telling us — I remember this so vividly — where our bench is. They pointed at the bench, and I’m thinking in my head, ‘Yes, that’s the bench that we sat on when we won at Rutgers.’ Then they’re taking us through to the locker room and I’m like, ‘Yes, that’s the locker room we were in.’ Everything, it kind of came full circle anyway. I had this sense of, ‘This was meant to be. There’s no way we’re losing now.’ It was kind of funny how nine years later I was in a similar situation.”
Dailey’s instincts proved accurate. The Huskies knocked off NC State and Clemson to make it to New Orleans, where they were beaten by Virginia.
To this day, that team reminds her of the 1982 Lady Knights.
“We were a blue-collar team,” she said. “We were a blue-collar team that played with a certain chip on our shoulder anyway.”