The waltz continues
Good ol’ Rocky Top: Huskies pay a visit to Tennessee to renew great series
With Uconn women’s basketball set to face Tennessee on the road on Thursday, head coach Geno Auriemma took some time to give his players a background of the storied rivalry. Auriemma told them how it started, back on Jan. 16, 1995, with the No. 2 Huskies on the rise and upsetting the No. 1-ranked Volunteers. They went on to an undefeated season, beating Tennessee once again in the national championship game to capture their first title in program history. The bad blood between the two programs began to grow from there.
He shared what the rivalry meant to women’s basketball, gaining the sport more attention with nationally televised games
and the excitement that came as the two teams traded blows. And he explained what it evolved into.
“It was probably the first and
only classic women’s basketball rivalry on the level of North Carolina and Duke — I don’t know that there’s another one,” Auriemma said Wednesday. “It became something really special.”
The rivalry was paused while most of the current Huskies were growing up, so many of them didn’t understand just how big of a deal it used to be (the two teams didn’t play from 2008-19).
As No. 5 Uconn (18-2, 11-0 Big East) gets set to face Tennessee (16-6, 8-0 SEC) in a nationally televised affair at Thompson-boling Arena, Auriemma reflected on the current state of the rivalry and just how much has changed since it was at its peak.
Those were the days when Pat Summit was leading the Volunteers, matchups were often between the top two teams in the country and fans went at each other’s heads. Thursday will be the first time in the rivalry’s history that Tennessee enters unranked.
“It’s healthy because it still means something, but I don’t know exactly what that is,” Auriemma said of the rivalry. “I’m proud of the fact that we’re still standing through all this and all this time and all these changes.
“We’re still hanging around here in the top four or five and it’s still
gonna be a big game. You know, everybody thinks it’s a big game. But there’s going to have to be a real rejuvenation for their players and our players to kind of get caught up in it.”
Still, there is a lot of excitement around Thursday’s game.
It will be the first time the rivalry will be played in front of a full-capacity crowd at Thompson-boling Arena since Jan. 7, 2006, when Candace Parker was playing for the Volunteers. The current iteration that started with a home-and-home in 201920 has only featured one game in Tennessee, and that crowd was limited to a few thousand people due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to have a great atmosphere and a great environment to really showcase women’s basketball at this elite level,” said Tennessee head coach Kellie Harper, who took part in the rivalry as a player from 1995-99.
“I know our team is excited. Who wouldn’t be right? Everybody wants to play in that kind of environment with that atmosphere and a lot of fans in the stands.”
To add even more to the hype, ESPN’S College Gameday show will be televised live an hour before tipoff, just the fourth time ever the program will center around women’s basketball — the first was in Storrs before a game between Uconn and Notre Dame on Jan. 16, 2010. Elle Duncan will host the show from inside Thompson-boling Arena, alongside commentators Andraya Carter, Rebecca Lobo, Carolyn Peck and Holly Rowe.
“I noticed that not just ESPN College Gameday, but there’s been a lot more front-page stories, a lot more attention given to college women’s basketball [and the] WNBA,” Auriemma said. “These things are proof that we’re doing mostly the right things. I think these are all positive things for women’s basketball.
“ESPN has a huge impact on what happens to women’s basketball because they do the tournament. So they can get to decide during the course of the season, how do we want to promote women’s basketball. And some years quite frankly they’ve done a s ***** job. And I think it’s starting to change, I really do. “
The game is also part of ESPN’S annual “We Back Pat” initiative honoring the late Summitt.
“If Pat wasn’t the coach of Tennessee and I wasn’t the coach here at Connecticut and we didn’t have the kind of games and the kind of intensity playing each other in four national championship games, semifinal games that neither of us would be where we got to,” Auriemma. “We helped each other.
“Coaching against Pat and having Pat in the world of women’s basketball is like Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski and John Wooden — you know, people that have been at their school for a long time and accomplished a lot and become synonymous with with winning and excellence and all that.
“The other half of my brain is, at some point, you got to be fair to the kids that are playing there now and the coaches that are coaching there now, and understand that at some point this has got to be about them more than anything else.
“Because I think sometimes the pressure of having to live up to that legacy, of carrying on that legacy, in her name and keeping the flame burning, while all that’s really good at some point it’s got to take a little bit of a back seat to what Kellie’s trying to do and the program she’s trying to build and what her players are trying to do and how they’re going about trying to win a national championship.”
Both Uconn and Tennessee enter Thursday’s game on win streaks, one of which will come to an end by the final buzzer. Despite playing most of this year shorthanded, including Azzi Fudd recently reinjuring her right knee, the Huskies have won 11 in a row.
The Volunteers have won nine games in a row since starting the season 7-6 and falling out of the Associated Press Top 25 poll. They were ranked fifth in the preseason.
Like Uconn, Tennessee has also been hit hard by injuries this season.
Most notably, 6-foot-6 center Tamari Key was ruled out for the season in early December after blood clots were found in her lungs. Star guard Jordan Horston, who is averaging 15.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game, was out sick for Sunday’s game at Missouri and didn’t travel with the team. Her status for Thursday night is uncertain.
Another question surrounding this matchup is whether the series will continue from here. Thursday is the last game on the books for the homeand-home series, which was extended in 2021. Both Auriemma and Harper seemed in favor of keeping it going when asked about the series this week.
“I think it’s good for both fan bases,” Harper said. “You can see that by the attendance and the excitement, and obviously there’s just a lot of extra noise, extra hype prior to the game with this matchup.
“You can see the national attention it has drawn. So I think the buildup has been really good for women’s basketball, getting people talking about these two programs. I think it’s been a positive, so I think it would be good to continue it.”
Said Auriemma: “As long as the game is good and people treat each other well ... As long as it’s healthy and it doesn’t become something like it started to become last time, there’s a lot of value in playing the game.”
At a glance
Here’s what else you need to know for the game.
Site: Thompson-boling Arena
Time: 8 p.m.
Series: Uconn, 16-9
Last meeting: No. 10 Uconn 75, No. 7 Tennessee 56 at the XL Center on Feb. 6, 2022
TV: ESPN; Ryan Ruocco (play-by-play), Rebecca Lobo (analyst), Holly Rowe (sideline)
Streaming: ESPN app
Radio: Uconn Sports Network on 97.9 ESPN