Former Husky Berube returning to Storrs as Princeton’s coach
Princeton was one point away from meeting the UConn women’s basketball team in the Sweet 16 in Bridgeport last year.
The Tigers and Huskies were on the same side of the Women’s NCAA Tournament bracket in former Husky standout Carla Berube’s second true season as a Division I head coach leading Princeton.
Yet, Princeton’s season ended in the second round, losing to Indiana 56-55.
Berube will get her UConn homecoming Thursday when the No. 6 Huskies (6-1) host the Tigers at 7 p.m. at Gampel Pavilion.
“It’s exciting,” Berube said Tuesday over a Zoom call with local media. “Never in my wildest dreams, 26 years ago did I think I’d be back after playing in Gampel
and playing for Connecticut, that I would be coaching against the Huskies. So it’s whole full circle and just excited to be back and excited for the challenge ahead.”
UConn coach Geno Auriemma called Berube “the quietest kid” he’s ever had during his 38 years coaching the Huskies.
Auriemma coached Berube from 1993 to 1997. She helped lead UConn to its first national championship in 1995 and a 132-8 overall record during her time in
“Our goal was to win the conference,” Mora said. “And we did win the conference, we went 5-2. So, I gave out shirts last week that say 2022 UConn-ference champions. It seems really silly, but it helped us focus coming out of a heck of a tough gauntlet those first five weeks.”
Mora was unsure how receptive his team would be to the abstract idea, but it was immediately embraced by the players.
“We were all for it,” freshman quarterback Zion Turner said. “When he put that conference out there we were ready for the challenge. He challenges us every day and when we saw this we took it head on. Now we are UConnference champions. It is a
thing that is close to us and was something that we took pride in. It motivated us to go out and play hard.”
UConn would proceed to defeat Fresno State 17-14 the following week, snapping an 18-game losing streak against FBS teams.
The Huskies defeated FIU (33-12) a week later, winning back-to-back games for the first time since 2017.
“He just wanted us to not get down on ourselves” senior defensive back Tre Wortham said. “He wanted to boost our confidence and have something to play for. It is easy to go through a stretch like that and give in, but he saw in us that we weren’t the same team as last year so he just wanted to give us the spark that we needed.”
The UConn-ference record would fall to 2-1 (3-5
overall) with a loss against Ball State before heading into the bye week.
UConn rebounded with its first win in program history over Boston College after losing the previous 14 meetings dating back to 1908. The Huskies continued to ascend within the framework of its own fictional scenario, yielding real life results.
“Every week we would come back and look at it and see how we were doing,” Turner said. “It helped us focus on ourselves more than anything.”
UConn would take down UMass 27-10 to improve to .500 on the season and 4-1 in UConn-ference play. A week later, UConn earned bowl eligibility with an upset 36-33 victory over Liberty to improve to 6-5.
“I loved that idea,” senior linebacker Ian Swenson
said. “It added some more competition to our schedule and it was interesting to see who was winning and who was not.”
UConn squandered a chance to improve to 7-5, losing the regular season finale to Army 34-17. From then, the UConn players waited for not only waited for word on their bowl game hopes, but also watched to see if it had won the UConn-ference.
“We had to wait for Liberty to get beat our last week when we didn’t play to win the conference,” Mora said. “After they got beat I started getting texts from the guys saying ‘Hey, we won the conference. When are we getting our conference champion shirts?’ and stuff like that.”