HARNESSING THEIR HURT
In rematch of last season’s title game, Huskies look to exorcise frustration of that night — but keep focus on the task at hand
STORRS — Nika Mühl placed the ball below the Final Four logo and walked off the court as the final seconds of the 2022 National Championship game ticked away last April. The Uconn women’s basketball team had been dominated by South Carolina from the opening tip, seeing its season come to an end in a 64-49 defeat in Minneapolis.
“The end of that game, once everything kind of got to your head, like, this is reality, we really lost that game, I was very frustrated, very disappointed,” Mühl recalled on Friday. “Just looking back at the whole preseason, the whole season, everything we’ve been working for, and we didn’t show any of that in that game. That’s what hurt the most, that we couldn’t show it. So yeah, it was definitely very frustrating.”
Mühl said she’s been thinking about that loss a lot since last April and it drove her and the rest of the returning Huskies to work even harder over the offseason. Losses of any magnitude continue to motivate her and her teammates when they need a reminder to keep pushing in practices or games. But Uconn players want to leave their last game against the top-ranked Gamecocks in the past entering a rematch Sunday at noon at the XL Center.
“Personally, it still burns a little bit,” Aaliyah Edwards said. “But going into this game, kind of just forget about what happened last year and just attack this as a new game, it’s a new opponent. They’re a good team, we’re a good team. It’s just really who’s gonna bring it out at the end.”
“Personally, it still burns a little bit. But going into this game, kind of just forget about what happened last year and just attack this as a new game, it’s a new opponent.” — Aaliyah Edwards
When asked how much he and his staff are bringing up the title game loss this week, head coach Geno Auriemma pointed out how different Uconn looks like this time around. Edwards is the only returning starter.
“Well, let’s say we had everybody back from that team and you actually could make a big deal out of it,” Auriemma said. “But since Dorka (Juhász) didn’t play in that game, Lou (Lopez Sénéchal) didn’t play in that game, Ayanna (Patterson) didn’t play in that game, Aubrey (Griffin) didn’t play in that game, so there’s really very little to compare it to other than we know their style of play, we know how they’re going to play, we know what their strengths are. And that’s not gonna change regardless.”
What has changed is the way Auriemma views games like the upcoming one on Sunday. When Uconn would play Tennessee during the regular season at the peak of the rivalry he saw the matchup as a measuring stick because there was a good chance the two teams would meet in the national championship.
But Auriemma believes the sport has changed too much for that now. There’s simply too many other good teams and things that could happen in the coming months to put that much magnitude on a regular-season game.
“From my standpoint, I think you just got to take Sunday’s game for what it’s worth,” Auriemma said. “It’s not like we can go out there Sunday and put our whole season on the line and say, ‘Okay, this is going to define who we are’ and then Wednesday we find ourselves getting blown out by Marquette or something. … I think for sanity’s sake, for the players and for the coaches, you got to take the emotion out of all this.
“You can’t coach emotionally. You can’t make every play, every possession, every dribble, every pass — and trust me, I lived that life for 20 something years, 30 years maybe — I think it’s self destructive and it’s counterproductive,
it really is.”
So, with his new perspective in mind, how is Auriemma approaching Sunday’s game?
“I think you got to take it almost like a pro coach,” he said. “We got a game Sunday, let’s see what happens. Win by 10, ‘Yo man, we got a tough one on Wednesday.’ Lose by 20, ‘Yo guys, put it away. We got a tough one on Wednesday.’ That’s the only way you can keep your wits about you in this job anymore because everybody’s fragile, everybody’s a little bit sensitive and you don’t want one win to think, ‘Well we won, so let’s just cruise to the Final Four and the national championship,’ (or) ‘Well, we lost, let’s pack our stuff up. The season’s over, there’s no point to it.’ So I’ve gotten a little bit smarter as I’ve gotten older to realize that.”
While the Huskies don’t want put too much stock in the rematch against the Gamecocks or let their emotions get the best of them, there’s no denying that last season’s title game will be on the mind of many at the XL Center come Sunday.
“We know what the outcome was when we last matched up with them,” Edwards said, “so it’s just even more motivation to play our best game.”