T ORIGIN STORY
An oral history of UConn’s 1995 national championship win over Tennessee, a victory that launched the Huskies’ dynasty
he night before the 1995 national championship game, players and coaches of the UConn women’s basketball team talked, laughed and dined at an Italian restaurant in Minneapolis.
Hours earlier, the Huskies had blitzed Stanford 87-60 to set up a showdown with Tennessee for the most coveted prize in women’s college basketball.
“It was just a great night. It was really fun,” UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey recalled. “It wasn’t a celebration because we didn’t win anything yet, but it was just a really nice time.”
Tennessee had more depth and more physical talent, not to mention a rich championship pedigree under legendary head coach Pat Summitt. But none of that mattered to UConn.
The next day, April 2, 1995, the Huskies would beat Tennessee 70-64 at the Target Center, capping a 35-0 season and the program’s first national title.
Since then, the Huskies have won 10 more championships, etching their place as one of college sports’ greatest dynasties.
“In some ways it seems like yesterday. I can still feel it,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “And in some ways it feels like a different time, a different era, like it didn’t even happen at UConn, like it happened someplace else because it just happened so long ago.
“Where our program is now compared to where it was then, it would take generations. You can’t put it into words. If somebody would’ve said 25 years ago, ‘You’re going to be sitting at home, you’ll have 11 of these,’ I would’ve said you’re out of your mind. I thought we’d only get one.”
With the 25th anniversary approaching, Hearst Connecticut Media spoke with players, coaches and media members who were there about what they remember most from UConn’s first national championship game.
Geno Auriemma (UConn head coach): Back then, the games were played back to back (days), so we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. We knew it was going to be really, really difficult. We knew it wasn’t going to be like the day before when we played Stanford. We knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. It’s the championship game and we’re playing Tennessee.
Chris Dailey (UConn associate head coach): It was Palm Sunday, which is the longest mass of life if you’re a Catholic. For the people that went, I remember the priest kept talking about bend but don’t break. It kind of fit. In the game we can bend, but can’t break. It was kind of prophetic.
The Huskies had beaten Tennessee 77-66 earlier that year on Jan. 16 at Gampel Pavilion, leading to their first No. 1 ranking in the national poll. The young, exuberant Geno Auriemma gave the Huskies confidence that they could do so again.
Dailey: Generally, if you’re the No. 1 seed, which we thought we were, you get the nicest locker rooms, but as we found out, we did not have the nicest locker room. After we beat Stanford, they asked us if we wanted to move into the other locker room, which was bigger, and we
said, ‘No, we’re good.’ There was that feeling of disrespect, people didn’t really truly believe that we were the best team.
Jamelle Elliott (UConn forward, 1993-96): Coach Auriemma and Chris Dailey did a really good job of taking it one game at a time, one practice at a time, staying in a routine. For me, my parents and my brother still hadn’t gotten there yet — they were coming on a train from Washington D.C. — and that was on my mind, but for the most part it was a typical game day for us. It was something that was ingrained in us.
Mel Greenberg (former Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer): There was minimal pressure on that team because everything was Geno. It was his world. He’s this new personality star. Every time he said something, you wondered what was coming next. The team had pretty good personalities, too. They weren’t shy.
Carla Berube (UConn guard, 1994-97): We were loose. There was probably some anxiety, of course, but I think seeing Tennessee in January gave us a little more confidence that we can play with them and we can beat them. But we knew the stakes were higher and we weren’t in the comfortable confines of Gampel Pavilion.
Greenberg: There’s two kinds of loose. There’s bravado loose and there’s loose. And they were kind of loose.
Elliott: You’re excited, you’re anxious, you’re nervous, but you’re also prepared because your coaches put you in a position to prepare you for this moment. When you’re prepared that puts you a little more at ease, but still knowing this is the biggest game of your college career.
Foul trouble plagued the Huskies in the first half. National
Player of the Year Rebecca Lobo and All-American point guard Jen Rizzotti each had three and 6foot-7 Kara Wolters had two. Yet, the Huskies trailed only 38-32 at halftime thanks to timely efforts by Jamelle Elliott, Carla Berube and Nykesha Sales.
Elliott: That was the story of the game. Our arguably three best players are in foul trouble. Me personally, I went from being a screener and a rebounder, doing all the little things, to now all of a sudden I had to be in a situation where I had to … keep our team in the game. If we didn’t do that, then we could’ve easily gone into halftime down 18 or 20 points instead of six.
Berube: We had two really great leaders out there in Jen and Jamelle. I was just sort of plugging a hole until we could get Rebecca back in the game.
Greenberg: Carla was like in baseball a middle inning reliever. She got them through the first half, to at least stay right there, until (Auriemma) could bring the troops back in.
Auriemma: Nykesha played a huge role in that, being a freshman and having to play a lot of minutes in that magnitude of a game. There were times when she was the primary ball-handler.
Dailey: It was almost like déjà vu. The first time we ever went to the Final Four (UConn lost to Virginia 61-55 in 1991) we didn’t have anyone over 6-1. (Lobo) had gotten her third foul in the first half so we were like, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’ We were lucky to only be down six. It was one of those where you’re walking into the locker room, this could be a lot worse.
Auriemma: There was no sense of panic or anything like that. If the tables had been turned and the other team had three of their starters in foul trouble, we would be blowing them out. That’s the message that we came out of there with.
Tennessee stretched its lead to nine, but UConn chipped away at the deficit and pulled within one, 58-57, with 7:01 left on a steal and layup by Rizzotti. Two free throws by Elliott put the Huskies up 59-58 with 5:44 remaining, to which Tennessee responded by jumping back in front. But the Huskies took the lead for good with 1:51 to go on a coast-to-coast layup by Rizzotti.
Dailey: We were blue collar workers. We were just going to work. If we didn’t win the game, it wasn’t because we backed down. And so we had 20 minutes. We didn’t try to score six points in the first possession. It’s a long 20 minutes. They just took it possession by possession.
Elliott: It just came down to individual players making some individual great plays.
Berube: A couple plays can change the game. Nobody worked harder than Jen, so I’m glad it was her making those plays.
Auriemma: It wasn’t one of those we won because one kid played out of their mind and carried us. It was a little bit of everybody.
With 9.9 seconds left and UConn leading 68-64, Berube stepped to the free-throw for a one-and-one.
Greenberg: They’re holding their own and it’s really tense. You’re cheering for the story. Tennessee was Darth Vader or the Yankees. It’s a better story if UConn wins.
Elliott: At that point, I was praying. You have those moments where you pray to God that these please go in. It was an emotional game.
Dailey: It was kind of sinking in. There was a picture of the bench where they’re hooking arms when she’s shooting the free throw — the anticipation of actually being able to celebrate the moment.
Berube: I’m not supposed to say this now because I’m a coach, but I felt like the game was already in hand. We were up four with not that much time left. But if you think back, those were pretty big and important. I’m glad that Coach had the faith in me to get fouled and just step up and make them.
Dailey: Carla was unflappable. That’s why he knew that she needed to have the ball in her hands so she could make the free throws. There was no question in his mind who needed to go to the line. And she didn’t miss. She never really missed.
The celebration began on the court and spilled well into the night, ending in a gathering inside Auriemma’s hotel suite, where they rewatched the game on tape.
Auriemma: There was a tremendous amount of family and friends, so it went a long, long time. We all ended up sitting in my room and just talking about the game, reminiscing about the season. Somebody said they had a videotape of the game, so I said, ‘Yeah, let’s put it in.’ We just had a lot of laughs watching the game. It was weird that you just played the game and now you’re watching it. It was a really comical situation, but it was a lot of fun.
Elliott: It was a lot of fun, a lot of fun. Everybody commentating, having a good time, making jokes, rewinding, it was just like watching a home video where you can relive something that you just did and laugh and joke and be excited about. It was probably one of the best parties I’ve been to.
Berube: That was great. He was probably a bit critical of some of the things he saw on the film, but it was fun just being together and being able to watch what just happened.
Auriemma didn’t sleep a single minute. He and the rest of the team flew back to Bradley International Airport the next day, where thousands of fans awaited their arrival. On their drive back to campus, they were greeted by banners on the highway overpasses. The celebration culminated with a pep rally at packed Gampel Pavilion.
Auriemma: It was really early in the morning. It had to be about 4:30, 5 o’clock. I was still awake. I remember hearing something outside the front door. I open the door and somebody had dropped the newspaper. It was Monday morning’s USA Today. Here I was sitting there reading about our game in the USA Today. It was like, ‘Hey yeah, that was really cool, we won the national championship. I’m reading all about it right now.’
Dailey: The next day, it was such a big deal. You know when you’re watching TV and major things happen, they do the little runner at the bottom? That Monday, it was like, ‘They’re on the plane.’ They’re giving a running account of where we were. ‘Breaking news: They landed.’ It was amazing.
Auriemma: Jamelle I think said it best. ‘This is like OJ man.’ There’s helicopters following us, the TV cameras got our bus on the road. It was bizarre.
Berube: People were stopped on the side of the road just to wave at our bus. It’s the first one, so they went all out. It was pretty amazing.
Auriemma: It probably wasn’t until later that night (that I got to sleep). It was the full 24 hours at least. It was the adrenaline. You won a national championship. How can you come down from that? Especially with the kind of team that we had, the kind of kids that we had, the amount of fun that those kids had. It was unlike anything we had ever experienced.
Elliott: I do remember at some point the coaches saying, ‘OK, this is great, but remember you are a student-athlete and you have to go to class tomorrow.’