story & photo
by Vito J. Leo

It is not unusual that the UConn Women’s Basketball Team has 33 wins as the NCAA Tournament approaches, nor is the fact the team has yet to lose a game this season. After all, four women’s teams have finished a college hoop season undefeated, including CT in 1995 and 2002.

But what is unusual – make that astonishing! – about this current edition of head coach Geno Auriemma’s team is that they are not only winning all their games, but they are winning them by blowing away the opponent, beating teams by an average margin of more than 31 points per game, including the recent demolition of fifth-ranked Louisville in the Big East Tournament championship game on March 10.

Much to the delight of the mostly-pro-UConn crowd that filled Hartford’s XL Center, the Huskies jumped to a 9-0 lead and like the Energizer bunny, they just kept going and going and going, piling up a 26-point halftime bulge en route to a 75-36 victory over the Cardinals.

Geno said that despite the big margins his team had posted this season (including a 28-point victory over Louisville during the regular season), he did not expect such an easy win in the championship game.

“I could not have envisioned anything like this. I was surprised and I think every other coach on the staff was just as surprised,” said Geno after he guided his team to its second consecutive Big East Tournament championship and 15th overall.

What came as no surprise to anyone, however, was that CT’s sensational sophomore Maya Moore was named the 2009 Big East Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. Indeed, by the time the six-foot forward was taken out late in the game, she had outscored the entire Louisville team, 28-27!

“Maya Moore is what makes us a great team. The other players make us a good team but she makes us a great team,” Geno said of the player named Big East Player of the Year for the second straight season.

A sentiment shared by Louisville head coach Jeff Walz who praised Maya for “her ability to dominate a game [which] is just unique. There aren’t many players in the country as talented as her and the scary thing is she’s only a sophomore,” Jeff said.

Joining Maya on the 2009 Big East all-tournament team were two UConn juniors, Tina Charles and Kalana Greene.

Thus far this campaign, Geno’s troops, led by their floor general, senior Renee Montgomery, have marched through the competition with a scorched earth policy that rivals Sherman’s visit to Georgia: the 33-0 Huskies have won by 30 or more points 19 times (including a mid-January visit to then-second-ranked North Carolina) and their smallest score differential has been 10 (Notre Dame and Rutgers). That doesn’t include a 28-point victory over Oklahoma, currently ranked third in the nation.

The top-ranked Huskies should continue their torrid tourney pace when the NCAA Tournament opens at Gampel Pavilion at noon on March 22, with the Huskies guaranteed to play their first two games in Storrs. The second-round game is set for March 24 at 7 p.m.

The old adage in sports is that offense sells tickets but defense wins games. And the key to this UConn team’s unrelenting domination of the best teams in the country is they can play great basketball at both ends of the court.

“What I’m really proudest of, is that in all the big games we’ve played this year, these kids have really been committed to the defensive end,” Geno said.

In all three of their Big East Tournament games, UConn shut down the opponent’s leading scorer.

In the 79-42 quarterfinal win over South Florida, the Huskies shut out Jazmine Sepulveda, no small feat since the senior guard had just one day earlier tied a tournament record with eight three-pointers in the Bulls’ second-round win over Cincinnati.

The next night, for the second straight game, UConn held the opponent’s hot scorer scoreless, shutting out Villanova’s Laura Kurz who had scored 21 points to lead the Wildcats’ upset against Notre Dame in the quarterfinals.

In the championship game, Cardinals’ Angel McCoughtry, the sixth-leading scorer in the nation, managed to break the shutout skein but still couldn’t hit double digits in the “points scored” column.

Louisville may have an Angel but Geno is orchestrating an angelic choir this year, a team playing on a higher plane.

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