Stewart facing home team
UConn star grew up a Syracuse fan
One of Breanna Stewart’s favorite memories of growing up is going to Syracuse women’s basketball games, sitting next to her father at the Carrier Dome and eating nachos.
They’d go all the time when she was at Cicero North High in Cicero, N.Y. Her house is five minutes from campus.
Stewart and her dad, Brian, didn’t go to the men’s games, but not because she wasn’t a fan. In fact, she loves coach Jim Boeheim. It was just “crazy packed” so they’d watch on TV.
Things will come full circle, as Stewart says, when the threetime national player of the year and three-time Final Four most outstanding player faces her hometown team for the national championship Tuesday (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN). Connecticut is chasing its fourth consecutive title and NCAA-record 11th overall.
“If you wrote this, it would sound like somebody made it up. And it’s real life,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “Stewie is a huge Syracuse fan. ... And she’s come right out and said it. Like if she was a guy playing high school ball there, there’s no doubt in her
mind she’d be playing at Syracuse. But it just wasn’t the right time for her to go there, and Connecticut was a better place for her.
“And there’s a soft spot, I think, for Syracuse, which she’ll probably admit to today and Wednesday, but not tomorrow. But it’s ironic. It’s just a great story. It really is.”
Five years ago when Stewart was deciding where to go to school, she gave the local university a shot. She’s friends with a lot of the players, including star guard Brittney Sykes, who played with Stewart on the AAU Philadelphia Belles team. The Orange made her top 10. But Quentin Hillsman’s program wasn’t what it is now. Even if it had been, she politely responds by saying UConn was the right fit.
In 2011, the Orange were in the midst of a 25-10 season while UConn had won seven titles. It wasn’t exactly a secret where Stewart was going, despite the fact she and her family had a great relationship with Hillsman and his family.
“When it came down to choosing a school, it came down to my personal goals. ‘What do I want to do with basketball?’ And what I wanted to do was become the best player I could be. Become one of the greatest. That kind of thing,” Stewart said.
“From what Coach (Auriemma) has done with all the previous players that have gone through his program, it was hard to say no to that.”
Hillsman gushes about Stewart as if he were talking about one of his players. He’s friends with Brian Stewart. They text each other, and Stewart’s father congratulated him on the Orange’s national semifinal win against Washington on Sunday. Hillsman says if it were any other team playing UConn, he’d be cheering for Stewart.
“Yes, I would be rooting for her,” Hillsman said. “It’s one of the things where you’ve got two good teams playing. One that’s great; one that’s trying to be great. And it’s just fun. Fun to be here. It’s fun to be able to compete in this. That’s why you do it, to compete at the highest level. And I don’t think you can get to a high level right now in women’s basketball without playing UConn.”
UConn and Syracuse were rivals when both programs played in the Big East. Stewart played the Orange twice during her freshman year, and UConn won both by an average of 19 points. She hasn’t faced them since — although UConn tried to play a homecoming game for Stewart at Syracuse this season, but Hillsman says they couldn’t make it work with the schedule.
The other UConn seniors got their hometown games. Texan Moriah Jefferson played a conference game at SMU, and UConn scheduled a game at DePaul for Chicago native Morgan Tuck. But Syracuse turned down the request for Stewart. This week she said — with a smile — that “it sucked” she couldn’t play at the Dome.
Bankers Life Fieldhouse isn’t the Carrier Dome, but if the Huskies win a fourth consecutive title Tuesday, it surely will feel almost like home.