Once upon a time, the dominance of UConn’s women’s basketball was so overwhelming and longstanding that the sport would’ve been more interesting with teams capable of giving the Huskies some real competition.
Imagine that. Being so great for so long that people get bored.
As UConn (34-0) enters the NCAA Tournament boasting the title of undefeated reigning national champion and — for the first time in eight years — No. 1 overall seed, it’s hard to ignore how far the game has come.
Yes, the Huskies are currently on a 50-game win streak and aiming to become the first team to repeat as champion since their four-straight titles from 2013 to 2016.
But this isn’t the stretch that saw UConn record a 111-game winning streak from 2014 to 2017. This year, the Huskies will be pitted against pleny of threats in a star-studded bracket full of teams.
UCLA (31-1) was on UConn’s heels as it earned the second overall seed in the tournament, winning 25 straight games and taking its sole loss to Texas on a neutral court.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma didn’t put much stake into the seeding victory over the Bruins, which NCAA selection committee chair Amanda Braun said was only decided by a slight edge in a committee vote.
It’s a testament to just how much competition the NCAA has to offer.
This year’s top four seeds — UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina — all appeared in the Final Four last year in Tampa. Texas and South Carolina had to survive the SEC, with the Longhorns beating the Gamecocks in the conference tournament championship game.
The Final Four will be held in Phoenix this year, and it’s no sure bet all four teams will be back.
“We recognize that there’s a lot of good teams out there, and there are times when I felt like we deserved a No. 1 seed by our wins and record and who we beat, and it didn’t pan out that way. And this year, it did,” Auriemma said. “And when you break it all down over the next three weeks, if you’re fortunate enough to play all three weeks, you have to beat the best teams.
“Doesn’t matter whether you’re 1, 2, 3, 4 (seed), whatever you are.”
A new era
There was no arguing against the Huskies as the crown of women’s basketball for most of the last three decades since 1995, when they won their first national championship under Auriemma.
During that span, the program amassed a record 12 national titles, six undefeated seasons and a new era of parity in women’s basketball began.
Although the Huskies reached 14 straight Final Fours between the 2008-2022 seasons, they also went eight years without an NCAA championship before Paige Bueckers starred in their 2025 run.
Two first-time champions, South Carolina and LSU, were crowned during UConn’s title drought.
The Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson led South Carolina to its first title in 2017 under coach Dawn Staley, who played against Auriemma and UConn as a point guard for Virginia and ousted him from the Final Four in 1991.
Staley lost her first contest as a coach against Auriemma by nearly 30 points, but eventually earned four straight wins against UConn between 2020 and 2024.
In 2023, Angel Reese led LSU to its milestone win over Caitlin Clark’s Iowa team in the national championship game. That matchup set viewership records only to be broken by the 2024 NCAA women’s championship game between Iowa and South Carolina, which averaged 18.9 million viewers and surpassing that year’s men’s championship (14.8 million) for the first time in history. The women’s final peaked at 24 million viewers, becoming the most-watched basketball game —college or professional — since 2019.
“What’s happened in the last maybe five or six years — we haven’t been as dominant, so there’s been a void a little bit,” Auriemma said in 2023. “Because when we win four straight national championships, it is UConn, UConn, UConn, UConn all the time.
“Well, now when we’re not there, even though we’re — we were in the Final Four all these years — there’s other teams that are capable of winning and that’s excited people a lot, that’s made more people pay attention.”
Rivalry needed
If that larger audience tunes in again this season, UConn will treat it to some of the basketball it has played in years.
Led by All-Americans Sarah Strong (18.5 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 3.4 steals, 1.6 blocks per game) and Azzi Fudd (17.7 points, 3.0 assists, 2.6 rebounds), the team has a healthy roster. Not to mention, some residual confidence from last season’s title.
All that’s missing is a good old fashioned rivalry.
For early UConn, it was the Tennessee Lady Volunteers led by the late great coach Pat Summit.
While Tennessee remains in company with UConn as the two winningest program’s in women’s basketball history, the Lady Vols ended the season on a seven-game losing streak and landed a No. 10 seed this year, the second-lowest in the program’s history.
In yet another reminder of how interesting the women’s tournament will be this year, even Tennessee can’t be counted out for a significant run of its own — and hopefully, that’ll be enough to keep crowds tuned in.
Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @Callie__Fin on X.
