Perfect Huskies Stand Among UConn’s Finest Teams
ST. LOUIS — The championship afterglow was still there, but Geno Auriemma’s brow furrowed and his demeanor briefly flickered. A reporter had asked the departing point guard Renee Montgomery to describe her elation at ending the University of Connecticut’s championship drought in women’s basketball.
From left, Connecticut’s Tina Charles, Maya Moore and Renee Montgomery celebrated their win against the Louisville Cardinals on Tuesday night. More Photos »
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Auriemma turned away from the microphone, but not far enough. “Drought?” he incredulously said. “A drought?”
For the first time since 2004, Connecticut made it rain confetti with its championship victory over Louisville. By Connecticut standards, the gap had been generational. Such is the lofty benchmark when the reflection of the jersey is the legacy to uphold and the team is not chasing opponents on the court but legends of its past.
Connecticut navigated a balancing beam this season, stomping on opponents for a third undefeated season at 39-0. But the players also walked on egg shells, knowing that one misstep would cost them a place in history.
“When you win three in a row and you go four years without one, it’s like your program has fallen off a cliff,” Auriemma lamented last week. “I guess that’s what we’ve created and that’s what we’ve got to live with.”
The confetti had hardly settled before he was asked about next season’s team. Montgomery, an all-American point guard, is his only departing senior and will soon become a high W.N.B.A. selection. Tina Charles, the Final Four’s most outstanding player, and the do-everything sophomore Maya Moore are set to return. They will be joined by guard Caroline Doty, who missed a large chunk of the season after tearing an anterior cruciate ligament, and the recruit Kelly Faris.
Throughout this season and after each win Auriemma reminded the Huskies that he felt they were nowhere near the 2002 championship team that went 39-0 behind Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Swin Cash.
“Come the middle of August, I’ll be trying to figure out how we can do the exact same thing next year,” Auriemma said. “And the minute we lose out first game, I’ll start screaming at these guys: ‘You’re nowhere near as good as last year’s team, they were unbelievable.’ I can’t get past looking into the next thing.”
Tuesday’s 76-54 victory came in the same matter as many in Connecticut’s trail of blowouts. After a brief give-and-take, the Huskies exhausted any hope of a Cardinals comeback by halftime.
In the days leading to the championship, Auriemma said he had become sleep-deprived, tossing and turning at the thought of Montgomery ending her career without a championship.
“It’s like if you win a Super Bowl, you probably have a quarterback that defines the team,” Auriemma said. “And every one of those players that were all-Americans and great players had the same characteristics as Renee. And she did everything they did. She worked as hard as they did. Led as well as they did. So, for a lot of them, it happened before their senior year.”
Her standing safely secured, Montgomery sat beaming Wednesday morning.
“Everything is making me happy right now,” she said. “They had bagels in the back and I was happy about bagels.”
The debates on which is the better Connecticut team will go on, and future teams will play under a shadow that only grew Tuesday. Each undefeated team seems to have one-upped the other. The 1995 team was the trendsetter. The 2002 team won four more games. And this year’s team became the first to win all of its games by double digits.
It is reminiscent of the 2001-2 squad, said Rebecca Lobo, the star center of Connecticut’s first undefeated team.
“The experience is similar, though,” Lobo said. “We did go undefeated, we were in Connecticut, where you have so much media attention. But I think they were blissfully unaware of the expectations of people outside the Connecticut program or the pressure that people think they might be feeling. They are just, in their eyes, college kids who closed every game.”
That is a discussion from which Auriemma generally excuses himself. He did joke that he told Lobo her team could not compete with the teams of today.
“The reason that this team is where they are is because they have all those qualities that those other teams have,” Auriemma said. “Really good players, really committed, really good role players, and they get really good coaching from their coaching staff.”
He gets the question often, although to Auriemma it is unfair. But when asked what would happen if he had the chance to coach all three of his undefeated teams and another of his championship squads against one another, Auriemma grinned.
“The way I think about it is, I would coach a different team every quarter,” he said. “A team in the first quarter, a team in the second quarter, a team in the third quarter. And the team I coached in the fourth quarter would win.”
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