INDIANAPOLIS—Hinkle Fieldhouse is full, double the size of the previous highest crowd this season. The Butler women have played basketball for 50 years, and this is their first sellout. The concourses have narrowed enough to flunk an EKG, closed by kids holding up signs and parents holding up cell phone cameras.
The Connecticut Huskies have come to town. And that still means something.
“Our players are used to this,” Geno Auriemma will say later, which of course they are. Before there was Caitlin Clark, there was the UConn traveling show, playing to big crowds wherever it roamed. Between Clark turning into Taylor Swift with a jump shot and the emergence of other marketable powers from South Carolina to LSU to UCLA, the women’s game has exploded and the Huskies have not had the main stage to themselves. Why, you’ve even needed two hands to count defeats in recent seasons and the NCAA has confirmed the rumor that it can actually hold a Final Four without Connecticut. Once in 16 tournaments, that is. And it has been eight years since the last national championship. In Huskies years that feels like about 30. Time enough for Auriemma to hit the big 7-0.
⛹️♀️ MORE WOMEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL ⛹️♀️
But there is a whiff of the glory days about the program that rolled through here Saturday and disposed of Butler, 86-47. The team that beat South Carolina by 29 points in the Gamecocks’ own front yard and has lost once since Christmas aims to be March-ready. Anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with women’s college basketball, right down to all the little girls in Paige Bueckers No. 5 jerseys here Saturday, knows what that could mean.
“It’s getting harder and harder and harder to predict with any degree of certainty in today’s world what you think is going to happen next,” Auriemma is saying after the game. “Do we have the ability like we’ve exhibited at times this year to have a really, really good run in March? I believe so. Did we have that look all the time this season? No. But the great thing about the NCAA Tournament is you don’t have to have it during the regular season, you just need to have it for three weeks.
“I would say right now we’re not exactly where I want us to be but I’m pretty excited about March.”
Connecticut has always been recognizable by its remarkable numbers. Still is . . .
The average winning margin this season of 29.4 for that 26-3 record. The 51 percent team shooting. The 21.6 assists a game. The Huskies had 37 field goals against Butler, and 28 assists. Bueckers and her 18.7 average, back to being healthy. Freshman Sarah Strong shooting 57.4 percent and getting eight rebounds a game, the newest star in the galaxy. Azzi Fudd back, too.
Then there’s the historical tonnage of the past. The 23 Final Fours and 11 national championships. The 601 consecutive weeks being ranked – No. 5 at the moment — back to 1993. The next active longest streak is South Carolina at 240. If the Huskies closed down the program today, the Gamecocks would have to stay in the rankings for the next 15-plus years to catch up.
There’s Auriemma, with his 40 years on the job and his 1,239 wins, more than any college coach ever, pick your gender. And this little nugget: The Huskies have played 181 different teams in his four decades. He has a losing record against two of them. He’s 0-3 against La Salle and 0-1 against U.S. International, but we’re talking games in the 1980s.
And there are scenes such as this weekend, when an hour after the game there were people waiting outside by the team bus in 20 degrees, hoping to get an autograph or a picture or at least a wave. Caitlin Clark made such scenes famous but Connecticut has experienced stuff like this for eons. Auriemma will never be too old to take it for granted, or miss the thrill of an afternoon such as Saturday when a Butler program averaging 1,430 fans a game packs in 9,100.
“A few years back whenever I would get contacted, especially by a friend who just got a head coaching job or coaches that I’ve known for a long time that were starting a program, I would always say to them, `Hey, let me know when you’re ready (to host UConn). I’m not going to ask you but if you call me and ask me, I’m going to say yes.’
“I still get a kick out of it, I still do to this day, going in there and having the place sold out. That hasn’t changed one bit. I love it for a lot of reasons. One, this is a thrill for a high school player to go to college and experience this. And the way I’ve looked at it all these years is, a lot of these people may have never been to a college basketball game in person. Certainly not to a Butler basketball game in person. Does that mean 9,000 are going to show up for the next game? No. But if an extra 300 or 400 people that were here today decided they want to come back because they had a great time, that to me is how you grow the game. I think we’ve done a lot to expose a lot of fans to the game, and I think fans have caught on and they like what they see.”
CINDERELLAS: Lowest seeds to advance to each round in NCAA women’s basketball tournament history
UConn’s mighty shadow has acquired some company in the face of eight title-less years and a long run of injuries to top players. But the Huskies haven’t gone anywhere and this might be the team to remind the world of that. The senior citizen coach who built the juggernaut welcomes another March.
“It has been quite a privilege and it has had a tremendously positive impact on my life. I don’t feel 70 and I certainly don’t act it.”
Geno Auriemma was asked if he’s feeling his age as March approaches: pic.twitter.com/TuOeWWpNm7
— UConn on SNY (@SNYUConn) February 22, 2025
“Do I feel 70? When I’m at practice, no. When I’m coaching the games, no I don’t,” he says. “On a three-hour bus ride back from Seton Hall, yes I do. When I see a lot of my friends that I went to school with, I do think to myself how fortunate I am to be able to spend a majority of my time with young people. It has been quite a privilege and it has had a tremendous and positive impact on my life. I don’t feel 70 and I certainly don’t act it.
“They say you’re only young once but you can be immature forever. I’m a testament to that; I still feel young and I’m way more immature than I’d like to be.”
And he’s still the coach with the most wins, the most Final Fours, the most championships. What doesn’t he have?
Well, there’s this: His last title came in 2016, two weeks after he turned 62. That’s younger than seven championship coaches on the men’s side – Jim Calhoun, Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Phog Allen, John Wooden, Lute Olson and Dean Smith. Also Tara VanDerveer, Muffet McGraw and Gary Blair on the women’s. Win this one, and he’d be 71 on title night and pass them all as the oldest national championship coach.
It’s not easy finding a record Geno Auriemma hasn’t yet passed.
