The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Thought process
Experts weigh in on UConn-South Carolina rivalry
South Carolina defeated the UConn women’s basketball team twice for championship crowns last season, including the NCAA title in April.
The teams have met only 12 times in the past 16 years, but they’ve become one of the most heated rivalries in the women’s basketball world thanks to star players and two iconic coaches in fellow Philadelphia natives Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley.
While the Huskies will always have their historic rivalries with
Tennessee and Notre Dame, their rivalry with the Gamecocks has quickly become a staple between both programs.
But when did things start to get chippy between the two and just how different is this rivalry compared to UConn’s history with the Lady Vols and the Irish?
CT Insider asked longtime reporters and broadcasters for their perspective on the UConnSouth Carolina rivalry ahead of Sunday’s matchup (noon/ XL Center/ FOX) between the two.
When did the rivalry begin?
UConn first met the Gamecocks in Storrs on Dec. 17, 2007. The then-No. 2-ranked Huskies beat the Gamecocks 97-39.
Dawn Staley took over at South Carolina the following season as the teams concluded their homeand-home series on Dec. 28, 2008, with No. 1 UConn winning 77-48 in Columbia.
The teams didn’t meet again until 2015. UConn was cruising past opponents in the middle of the Breanna Stewart era while South Carolina was just beginning its dominance with star forward A’ja Wilson. In the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons, the teams met once each year with both meetings being a Top-2 matchup between the nation’s best teams. UConn won both by an average of 18.5 points.
“Sometimes it happens gradually, you know, just slowly,” former Husky and current SNY analyst Meg Culmo said. “And UConn has been good for a long time and South Carolina came on the scene and Dawn has done a
really good job there and they haven’t gone away. So you have to give them credit for getting good and staying good.”
South Carolina didn’t get its first win over UConn until Feb. 10, 2020 — three years after the Gamecocks won their first national championship (a span that includes losing to UConn in the 2018 Elite Eight). After losing to the Huskies in their first eight meetings, the No. 1 Gamecocks beat then-No. 5 UConn 70-52 with thenfreshman Aliyah Boston.
“She was still relatively building there, so I’d say (it began) once they were consistent a couple years later,” said longtime Philadelphia-based journalist Mel Greenberg, who writes at Womhoops Guru,. “It had got to the point where they got to the level of UConn without beating UConn.”
The Gamecocks would have won the very next meeting if it wasn’t for Paige Bueckers. The thenfreshman scored 31 points including her buzzerbeater in overtime to give UConn the 63-59 win in Storrs on Feb. 8, 2021.
Last season was the first time South Carolina won two meetings in a row against UConn. The Gamecocks first beat the Huskies in November in the first women’s Battle 4 Atlantis championship game. Then in April, on the sport’s biggest stage, they gave UConn its firstever loss in the National Championship game, winning 64-49 for the program’s second national title.
“I do think it’s probably fair to say that now, you know, because they did something nobody else has done they beat UConn in a national championship game. They’re the first ever to do that and considering there was, you know, 11 chances before that, that’s pretty monumental,” said M.A. Voepel, who has covered the sport for ESPN since 1996.
What makes this rivalry unique?
Geno Auriemma vs. Dawn Staley. Two dominant coaches from two different generations of the sport yet both with Philly upbringings. And unlike Auriemma’s relationship with former rival coaches, the two appear to have mutual respect for one another.
The two have their own history as Auriemma coached against Staley when she was a player playing for Virginia in the early 1990s. In fact, it was a Staley-led Cavaliers squad that beat UConn in the 1991 Final Four.
Auriemma even coached Staley on Team USA as an assistant coach during the 2000 Olympics. And Staley served as an assistant under Auriemma at the 2016 Olympics.
While Auriemma comes from the same generation as the late Pat Summitt of Tennessee and Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw, the difference in generation between him and Staley have led to a unique version of a typical UConn rivalry.
“To me (UConn-South Carolina) is a game you look forward to because of the great play and that was the same with those other rivalries, but there was some tension in those other rivalries that really was from the coaches, and I just don’t quite sense that same tension with Dawn and Geno,” Voepel said. “... I think Geno had a lot of respect for Dawn as a player before he ever coached against her. I think he really did respect what she did for women’s basketball. And I think she respected what he had done. It doesn’t mean they’re not hyper-competitive and, you know, want to beat each other’s brains out on the court, they do, but it just feels different.”
More than just the teams’ coaches, the UConn-South Carolina rivalry has also been a showcase of often the nation’s best players. Stewart, Wilson, Boston and Bueckers just to name a few.
“You’ll watch UConn and South Carolina and say, ‘Who are we going to see on an Olympic team? Who are we going to see as future WNBA franchise-type players?’ Because that’s what’s cool about having something to look forward to even beyond college,” Voepel said. “The best of these kids we’re going to see in this matchup, we’re going to see for a long time and that makes it fun as well. It’s we’re seeing them now, but we know they’re going to be stalwarts in the game, several of them, for years to come.”
How does this compare?
UConn played Tennessee every season for 13 years. The Huskies faced off against Notre Dame for 24 straight years. There was constant tension between the players and the coaches. Iconic games both in the regular season and in the NCAA Tournament that made history. Three of the sport’s all-time greatest programs.
The Huskies’ first meeting with the Lady Vols in 1995 changed college women’s basketball forever. It sparked the sport’s most iconic rivalry and put it on national television.
Tennessee and UConn have met four times in the national championship game since then and the tensions have only grown.
“When that rivalry started with Tennessee, Geno was proving himself,” Voepel said. “When he first played Pat, he hadn’t won a national championship. So that was the Geno that was, and I say this in the most respectful way, he was the brash guy, the wisecracking guy. The guy that was like, ‘I’m not backing down to anybody.’ And that’s the mentality that his program took. And it was exciting and fun and it was going to challenge the established power.”
Auriemma and Summitt were known not to get along. They ran their programs differently and fought over calls during games and over recruits in the offseason.
“Beyond the game itself, it was Geno pushing all of her buttons and pissed her off every time he did,” Greenberg said. “The teams make the rivalry but with Geno, it’s the extra stuff that makes it more than a rivalry.”
His feud with McGraw continues to stir the pot every few years. They coached against each other in historic nail biters, argued over how they run their programs and how they each see the sport and even about team biases.
“Now that was two people that do not really care for each other and it was fun for the most part because it was genuine,” Voepel said.
The Huskies’ rivalry with the Gamecocks, on the other hand, is still fairly new. It started during the end of the original UConn-Tennessee rivalry and really spurred into what is now just within the past few seasons.
“It slid in a bit in place of the Tennessee rivalry, while the Tennessee rivalry was dormant if you want to say that, but it didn’t have the animosity of it and there could be any number of reasons for that,” Voepel said. “Part of it was, at least initially, South Carolina wasn’t winning those games. UConn was dominating the rivalry, but I also think it just came at a different time. UConn, already being a really wellestablished program, and then, Dawn Staley trying to build South Carolina to what she’s built it to.”
While it may not yet have the chippy history UConn’s other rivalries have, it’s still got the key components of any good rivalry.
“It definitely has the makings of those great rivalries,” Culmo said. “It’s great that like their fans don’t like us and I don’t think the UConn fans like them and that’s OK. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, like, not everyone’s supposed to love everybody. But it’s good to entertain that you want to kick their butt and they want to kick your butt.”
Bonus: Looking forward to Sunday
Sunday’s matchup is a rematch of last year’s 2022 National Championship featuring reigning Player of the Year in Boston.
The Gamecocks have yet to lose this season, while the Huskies have again been plagued by injuries to the point where their rotation only goes eight deep.
“What I’m most looking forward are probably two things: the Aaliyah (Edwards)-Aliyah (Boston)’s matchup because there’s no question, you know, Boston, she’s either going to be National Player of the Year or it’s probably going to be split in some way,” Voepel said. “Like she’s going to be right there. But Aaliyah Edwards has really made a case. I mean, let’s say if you’re going to have a ballot of the top five for Player of the Year, both (players) are on that.
“So it’ll be cool to see the two of them again on the court. And then just the difference in these two teams. You have a team that just seems like it has 25 people and a team that seems like it happens, you know, five . ... (It’s) a really hard 40 minutes against South Carolina because they do play such good defense. They’re physical. It’ll feel like, they can just keep bringing people in and bringing people in. The thing about UConn, though, I think is that they’ve accepted, I mean, they know there’s nobody to look over to to get a blow. You’re in. It’s you. So, there is something to the fact that they’ve become kind of iron women out of necessity.”
Added Culmo: “I feel bad, just because UConn is so depleted in terms of their personnel. So, I feel like it’s missing a little just because not everybody’s healthy. But, you know, they’ve been down most of the season. So, they’re finding a way … But it’ll be a great game and the XL center will be sold out. Everyone will be wearing their white. I just think it’s great for women’s basketball, that this big-time game is happening. It’s sold out, and it will be a great contest. You have two great coaches. Two great teams.”