How UConn women’s basketball has fallen short of expectations – CT Insider

The six years since, successful by most program’s standards but wildly complicated by any measure, have failed to produce the program’s 12^th title. It is the longest gap between championships since UConn won its first in 1995.  

“We’re going to win another one,” coach Geno Auriemma said before the annual First Night celebration Oct. 14. “It’s just a matter of when. I don’t know when that is. But we’re going to win another one. Sooner rather than later would be good for me.”

UConn Report

Auriemma, 68, is entering his 38th season, one that was lining up to showcase the full potential for a team with Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd sharing the backcourt, one that would funnel the Huskies into another Final Four thinking it had all the pieces to celebrate where its past handful of seasons have ended in bitter disappointment.  

Maybe UConn still has those pieces. But Bueckers’ torn ACL, sustained in July, will cause her to miss the season, an obstacle the likes of which UConn has so often been able to avoid.

Breanna Stewart showed up in 2012 with plans to win four championships in four seasons, and she did just that. The following waves of recruits — the Crystal Dangerfields, the Christyn Williamses, the Olivia Nelson-Ododas — did what so few UConn players have done since the mid-1990s by leaving without a single title.

Now UConn is preparing for five months of basketball without Bueckers, who won all major national player of the year awards as a freshman but has not climbed a ladder and snipped a net as a college player. She missed most of her sophomore season with knee injuries and will miss the entirety of her junior year with another.

This is not, of course, how anyone drew up the 2022-23 blueprint. Then again, it’s reflective of the tenuous nature of high-level sports in general, and of bumps along roads that UConn found so easily navigable for so long.

“It’s very rare that whatever Plan A is actually happens the way you want it to,” Auriemma said. “The problem with us is, a lot of our Plan A’s have gone exactly the way we want them to go. So when it doesn’t, which has also happened, you appreciate it more when it does go that way.”

The 2016-17 season played out to perfection, pushing UConn’s record winning streak to 111, before the Huskies’ lost a national semifinal to Mississippi State at the overtime buzzer on a jump shot by Morgan William.

UConn was undefeated again in 2017-18, until losing on another overtime buzzer beater in a national semifinal, this one by Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale.

The Huskies built a nine-point lead over the Irish with under eight minutes remaining at the 2019 Final Four but faded down the stretch of another semifinal loss. 

The 2020 NCAA Tournament was canceled due to the pandemic and UConn tiptoed over the wet COVID cardboard in 2020-21, one Auriemma had circled years in advance as one with the highest of potential, right into another Final Four — only to be upset by Arizona.

Last season, the Huskies dealt with an unprecedented string of injuries. Still, spurred on by Bueckers’ return for the postseason, they played themselves into a Final Four. In Minneapolis, UConn lost a national championship game for the first time in history, to South Carolina, which enters this season as a clear-cut favorite to repeat as champion — especially with Bueckers’ out.

Six years without a national championship? Stanford, another elite program with another iconic coach, went 28 years between their titles in 1992 and 2021. That is healthy perspective. Still, falling back into status as just another member of the upper-tier pack is a bit of a jolt for a program that stood alone for so long.

“I think the further you get away from it you realize it was a fantasy land that we created,” Auriemma said. “I had a conversation with one of our players recently and I said, ‘If you had to do it over again, what would you do differently in that national championship game last year?’ I said, ‘You don’t have to answer me, but if you’re in that game again, what will you do differently? Think about that for yourself.’ Because when you’re young, you think, ‘I’ll be in this game four years in a row.’ And there’s no guarantee you will be. So you have to maximize every opportunity you get. So now I really appreciate the opportunities that we get. We’ve been to what, 14 in a row, Final Fours? The next streak is, what, two? So it’s hard as hell to get there. Much less, how hard is it to win it?”

Winning a national championship is the most difficult, and most rewarding, thing to accomplish in this sport. What UConn once did with regularity, and what UConn is trying to do again, is not easy. 

UConn has been in the Final Four every season since 2008. The next longest streak is back-to-back appearances by South Carolina and Stanford. But each season since 2016 has ended just shy of the ultimate goal. It’s been six years of buzzer-beating losses, COVID-19 crises, injury after injury. It’s been wild where it was once so steady. 

“For the discerning fan, it’s a reminder of how hard this is,” Auriemma said. “For the crazy fans, it’s ‘Lock the doors at Werth. There’s no point in practicing. They’re never going to win again. The program is not what it used to be. Everybody sucks.’ So, yeah, for the 95 percent of fans that are realistic, they’re starting to get a sense for how hard this is and how great it was to be able to do that for that many years. The other people, they’ll come to their senses at one point.”

This was supposed to be era of Paige and Azzi, of Azzi and Paige. Out of a possible 72 games last season, UConn got just 42 out those players (17 from Bueckers and 25 for Fudd), and Bueckers was not healthy for a good portion of her appearances. Those players shared the court just 15 times last season and won’t again until 2023-24 — another example of a plan gone awry.

UConn lost, arguably, the nation’s best guard in Bueckers.

Still, UConn might have the nation’s best guard in Fudd.

That is more healthy perspective. Fudd has the ability to be the best player on the court in any game the Huskies play. A team with the best player can never be counted out. Fudd, in some ways, will be limited by Bueckers’ absence. She’ll also have more opportunity to truly carry the offense.

“I think there’s, ‘I wish Paige was playing because I would get more shots,’ ” Auriemma said. “People think, well, there’s more shots available now because Paige isn’t play. Well, actually, no, you would get more shots if Paige was playing because as soon as Paige dribbles the ball, two people run toward her and she always finds the guy that’s open. So that’s one side of it. I think she wishes that Paige was playing, because it would help her.

“The other side is, she does have more responsibility. She does have to do more. So her game is going to expand. And we’re going to run more things through her. One is exciting and disappointing – Paige isn’t here. The other is daunting. ‘Hey, Azzi, last year it was Paige and Azzi. Isn’t that really cool? For, what, 10 games, 12 games?’ Now this year you’ve got to be Azzi and you’ve got to be a little bit of Paige. And she said, ‘That’s a lot.’ I said, ‘I know.’ And she said, ‘It’s not anything I can’t handle.’ ”

Situations like the Bueckers injury do not have to derail a season for a team built like UConn, ranked No. 6 in the Associated Press preseason poll. But they can. Injuries to Svetlana Abrosimova and Shea Ralph probably kept the Huskies from the 2001 national championship. A 1998 injury to Nykesha Sales helped pull an Elite Eight curtain on that season.

Then the dynasty reached its height, with so few issues over so many years.

Now the Huskies head into the pursuit of a 15^th consecutive Final Four, and 12^th national championship, with all sorts of complications. Three players who led the team to the national championship game last season – Nelson-Ododa, Williams, Evina Westbrook – are no longer with the team. A primary post player, Dorka Juhász, is coming off surgery to correct the broken wrist she sustained during last season’s NCAA Tournament. Aaliyah Edwards, arguably the team’s best post player, recently took an elbow from Nika Mühl in practice and has a broken nose. And Bueckers, the player that pushed them into last season’s Final Four with an epic performance in a double-overtime victory over NC State in the Elite Eight, will be nothing more than an additional coach/cheerleader.

Is the team confident that it is a national championship contender?

“That’s another thing we haven’t thrown out there because, what’s the point?” Auriemma said. “That’s kind of in the back of their minds all the time, regardless. It was like that last year when we were going through those 20 games when Paige didn’t play. We’re a national championship contender until we get knocked out. If and when that day comes, we won’t be anymore. Today, October 14, we have as good a chance of winning the national championship as anybody else. We’ll see where that takes us. Not as good a chance as we had in June, but we still have a chance.”

mike.anthony@hearstmediact.com; @ManthonyHearst