The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Geno: Impossible to recreate rivalry
STORRS — UConn and Tennessee used to be the game in women’s basketball.
Now, at least one of those teams is treating it as if it’s like any other.
“I don’t think it holds the same place anymore,” UConn senior Crystal Dangerfield said Wednesday. “We weren’t there. It’s been gone for so long.”
The schools played 22 times over a 12-year span, including four times for the national championship, but the series was discontinued in 2007 amid allegations of recruiting improprieties. No. 3 UConn and No. 23
Tennessee will renew acquaintances on Thursday (7 p.m.) in Hartford.
“Everybody would love for it to be what it was, but it’s not,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “It’s nostalgia.”
He added: “Tomorrow’s game is a great game on the schedule. Is it what it used to be? No. Will it ever be? No, it won’t. As much as their fans or our fans may want it to be, it won’t. It won’t, it just won’t.”
So much has changed since their last meeting, Auriemma said, that it’d be impossible to recreate the rivalry. The teams are different, and the people are
different.
Kellie Harper, who played on three title teams for the Pat Summitt-coached Lady Vols in the 1990s, is working to revive a program that’s lost some of its luster over the years. The Lady Vols have not been to the Final Four since winning the national title in 2008.
Auriemma commended the job Harper’s done in her first season on Rocky Top, saying she’s embraced the school’s rich tradition, but also put her own stamp on things.
“Kellie’s not Pat. Too many coaches take over legendary programs and try to become what it was,” Auriemma said. “You can’t do that. I remember all those years when I was growing up and John Wooden retired at UCLA, everybody came in and was trying to be UCLA. … It’s great that Kellie’s being Kellie.”
Most of the Huskies are too young to remember much about the rivalry, and Auriemma hasn’t invested a lot of time explaining its historical significance to them. Outside of Dangerfield, who grew up a fan of Chamique Holdsclaw while living in Tennessee, very few of the Huskies who will be on the floor Thursday were even recruited by the Lady Vols.
“It’s still not the same because it had been gone for so long,” Dangerfield said. “I think had it been continued even one game a year, I think it would hold a little bit more weight to it. But it’ not the same. It’s probably going to feel like another game.”
Like Auriemma, associate Chris Dailey remembers when each UConn-Tennessee game meant everything. Few were more important to the Huskies than their very first meeting in 1995. The Huskies won 77-66 before a sellout crowd at Gampel Pavilion, then defeated the Lady Vols again a few months later, 70-64, for their first title.
“It has, I think, a lot of interest from people that followed it back when it was the premier rivalry in women’s basketball,” Dailey said. “You ask our players, I don’t think they know anything about it. They may know a little because they hear talk, but it was a long time ago. Our players were very, very young when it ended and very, very young to have even tried to follow it.
“I’m not sure right now with where both programs are, that for the current fan it makes that much of a difference.”