SPOKANE, WA. — On Monday at 6 p.m. Pacific Time, Geno Auriemma would confidently tell you that Sarah Strong played the best basketball of her young career during the third quarter of the Big East Championship game.
Two and a half hours later, that answer had changed.
“Everything she did tonight was pretty special,” Auriemma said. “But not much surprises me. Not much that Sarah does makes me go, ‘Wow, I didn’t know she could do that.’”
Strong still has things to learn. Few of them are on the court, though. After her team defeated USC 78-64 to advance to the Final Four, a ladder was brought out under the basket. When a team makes it to the Final Four they cut down the nets. But UConn isn’t just a team. UConn is a dynasty, and dynasties don’t conform. The Huskies haven’t cut down a Final Four net since 2009, but no one is quite sure how the tradition came about. Not even Auriemma.
“It didn’t start in the Final Four, it started in the Big East Championship,” Auriemma said. “At some point, someone on our team decided we aren’t doing that and it just stuck. So I don’t think we have cut them unless we win a national championship.”
It wasn’t until the confetti celebration ended that Strong realized she wouldn’t be posing with a piece of nylon, or sticking it in her Final Four hat. But she also didn’t care.
“I found out just now,” Strong said. “I know other teams do it, but we are kind of different. And I don’t really care. It’s just a net.”
That’s typical Sarah Strong. Outside of her circle, which of course includes her UConn teammates, not much else registers as important.
“She has no time for me, for you, for anybody else,” Aureimma said. “Whatever you get from her is what we all get as coaches. Her friends, her teammates, that’s a whole different story. She doesn’t care about whoever has a microphone, whoever has a camera, she could care less. Her friends, she has a blast, always.”
Strong clearly had fun on Monday. Twenty-two points, 17 rebounds and four assists worth of fun. It’s what Auriemma and the Huskies have come to expect from Strong. When he first watched the No. 1 recruit in the class of 2024, Auriemma saw her play in a tiny gym, where other than Strong’s two coaches, he was the only person in the room. When the workout was over, Strong came over and said hi. That was it.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I really like this kid,” Auriemma said with a smile.
Her no-nonsense approach is part of the reason Auriemma knew he could call on her to step up against USC. Paige Bueckers, who scored 40 points in her team’s Elite Eight win, would be the focus of USC’s defensive gameplan. So even with an elite, experienced big like senior Kiki Iriafen matching up with Strong, the Huskies looked to her to get things started.
“Sarah impacts the game in so many ways, that you just have so much confidence in her, so much belief in her,” Auriemma said.
She delivered 10 points in the first quarter, going 4 of 5 from the field with two three-pointers. She also helped to limit Iriafen, who finished with 10 points on 3 of 15 shooting. Then, Bueckers took over.
UConn led by just three points to start the second quarter, but Bueckers created separation heading into halftime by scoring 11 points and giving her team a 39-25 lead. Bueckers was happy to take a backseat to Strong in the first quarter, but she knew when it was her time.
“I’m just trying to read what the game is calling for,” she said. “Trying to read what we need at that moment, at that time, whether it’s passing, rebounding, scoring, just trying to do whatever it takes to win.”
Bueckers finished with 31 points, becoming the only player in UConn history to record back-to-back 30 point games. She and Strong played all 40 minutes on Monday night, to propel UConn to the Final Four. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn Chen, who grad transferred form Princeton, had 15 points, and Azzi Fudd, who struggled shooting for most of the game, made two three-pointers to help seal the game in the fourth quarter.
“That’s what you need,” Auriemma said. “As much as Paige and Sarah did a lot of the really hard stuff, you need other people to deliver something when it’s their moment.”
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That’s what it takes to get to the Final Four. Of course, UConn knows that better than any team, with 24 in program history. It’s not Final Fours that have agonized Auriemma for the last nine years. After UConn won four National Championships in a row from 2013 to 2016, he looked at his roster and thought, “We can do it again.” He’s thought that most every season since, but the Huskies have come up short. They were close in 2022, losing the championship game to South Carolina. In the nine years since that last title, UConn has been to the Final Four eight times.
No wonder they don’t cut down Final Four nets.
