How former Husky Culmo became the voice of UConn
Meghan Culmo’s first impression of playing for UConn takes place inside the Greer Field House.
It was 1988 and the women’s basketball team shared an auxiliary locker room with women’s soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring. The arena — which had a capacity of 4,600 — was never full. Culmo remembers UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey offering extra credit to students in her jogging class if they came to games.
“I still remember when nobody cared and nobody came,” Culmo said.
But it was that spring of Culmo’s freshman season in March 1989, inside the Field House, when everything began to change. When all the pieces finally came together and UConn won its first Big East regularseason and tournament titles. When the program made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
In the 33 years since, UConn has won an additional 26 Big East and American Athletic Conference regular-season titles, 25 conference tournament titles, made 31 more NCAA Tournament appearances and won 11 national championships — all of which Culmo has been a part of on the sideline.
After helping build the backbone of the team’s historic legacy during her playing career, Culmo has gone on to create a legacy for herself on the opposite side of the court as an analyst for the team on both TV and radio — including her run as SNY’s analyst and color commentator since 2012.
Through all the big wins
and the few heartbreaking losses, all the first-round WNBA draft picks and All-Americans, Culmo remains deeply involved with the program not only because of the relationships she’s made, but because of her appreciation for the team and where it all began.
“I just have such an appreciation of how it started and how there was no one around,” Culmo said. “Like this was never, honestly ... this was never the goal. I’m proud to be affiliated with it, but I’m happier for their success and the way (Geno Auriemma has) been able to do it. Because we’re witnessing something pretty special that I’ll never see again in my lifetime and the fact that I have a small part of it and helped kind of build it from the ground, like literally the ground, that will always be special to me.”
UConn women’s basketball didn’t move into Gampel Pavilion until halfway through Culmo’s sopho