Is 2025 the year UConn returns to the top of the sport?

“I truly believe that the higher you set expectations, the closer you get to achieving those,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma told reporters postgame. “We have tremendously high expectations every year. Those never go away. Some years you fall short, but most times we don’t.”

The Huskies have rarely fallen short of a conference tournament title in Auriemma’s 40 seasons at the helm, taking home the trophy in 30 of those seasons. Somehow, season after season, era after era, the program rises to the top.

“It’s probably easy to take for granted their excellence and what they do year after year after year, but I’m sure in the chairs of their staff, they know how hard it is.” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said. “I mean, we’ve won 52 games the last two years, and it feels like it couldn’t get much better. Yet, that’s what they’ve done for over 30 years.”

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For decades, the conference tournament title has been one stop along the way in a successful UConn season — never the final destination. With confetti still on her flat-brim hat, UConn redshirt senior Paige Bueckers, fresh off earning a record third BIG EAST Tournament Most Outstanding Player award, was already looking ahead.

“I feel like we’re heading in the right direction with our momentum heading into the tournament,” Bueckers said to reporters after the game. “Obviously, we have some time off before tournament play starts. So we want to continue to keep getting better, maximize on the practice days that we’ll have to prepare. Keep getting healthy and keep getting better and continue to have more reps of what we need to get better at.”

Make no mistake, in Storrs seasons are measured by whether or not UConn has the nets at season’s end — and so are player legacies. Throughout her entire five-year career as a Husky, when she’s been healthy enough to compete, those expectations have fallen most squarely on Bueckers’ shoulders. Each season she’s been available for the NCAA Tournament the Huskies have made it to the Final Four, advancing as far as the title game in 2022. But basketball is a team sport and in each Final Four run, there have been missing pieces — due to inexperience, injury, or a combination of both — that have prevented the Huskies from winning the big one.

With Bueckers in her final collegiate season, and the NCAA Tournament less than two weeks away, there’s a different feeling emanating from the program — a feeling that this is the year UConn returns to the top of the sport. The big three of Bueckers and tournament first team selections Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, not to mention the rest of its depth, makes UConn a formidable national championship contender.

“You can’t underestimate the change in personnel, right, how much that means,” Auriemma told reporters. “Because last year — let’s take that, for instance, and the year before — you’re going into the NCAA Tournament with your fingers crossed hoping that nothing else happens because you’re just so used to one setback after another after another that it almost felt like you’re operating on borrowed time. You know, that you are just waiting for that last shoe to fall. You knew that your margin for error was so slight, so narrow, and it’s hard to get players to play at a real high level and not understand we can’t foul, we can’t turn the ball over, we can’t miss shots. We have to do everything perfectly.”

“This year I think the sense is we can handle more things that are thrown at us. We maybe have answers to some of the things that we didn’t have last year. Obviously we don’t have the same level of experience that we had last year. … But what we do have is the ability if the game is not going in our direction that we can change it. That’s comforting to know. That doesn’t mean we’re going to change it, but we have the opportunity to change it.”

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It helps that this season marked the arrival of Sarah Strong, a generational talent who is already, as a freshman, one of the nation’s best players. Strong elevates the Huskies on both end of the court — a dynamic, three-level storer and elite rebounder whose quick hands and 6’2 frame make her a nightmare defensive matchup for guards and posts alike. She notched a double-double in each round of the conference tournament, contributing 13 points, 11 rebounds and six steals in the title game.

“Paige is so good, and she does so many things. But in another time, in another year, the things that Sarah did would be Most Outstanding Player in the tournament,” Auriemma said to reporters.

Then there’s Azzi Fudd, whose four seasons at UConn have been characterized more by injury than success on the basketball court. Fans have eagerly awaited a time when UConn’s backcourt duo of Bueckers and Fudd was available and healthy at the same time and, in recent weeks, that’s what they’ve gotten. Fudd has looked absolutely dominant at times — scoring 34 points on eight made 3-pointers against St. John’s in February — and finding her shooting rhythm from the midrange and on assertive drives to the basket. Until recently, the nation has only seen glimpses of Fudd’s potential, but this season she’s found her stride. Her presence on the wing, alongside Bueckers and Strong, almost feels like a cheat code.

“I think probably Azzi is the biggest beneficiary of all, because when you’ve got to pay so much attention to Paige and Sarah and what they’re doing with the ball, people maybe get a little bit sidetracked and they’re not quite sure, like, am I supposed to help over here, am I supposed to help guard these two guys? … and they make a mistake, and, boom, Azzi has a wide-open three,” Auriemma said. “So the three of them pretty much do what they’re really, really good at. We need them.”

The Huskies have also needed depth, something they’ve lost to injuries in recent seasons, to make a championship run. This season, they’ve found just that. They don’t need starting point guard Kaitlyn Chen to play the type of minutes expected last season of Nika Mühl, because this year KK Arnold and Ashlynn Shade, starters out of necessity last season, come off the bench. Redshirt freshman center Jana El Alfy has been steadily improving throughout the season, but having Ice Brady and Aubrey Griffin available takes some of the pressure off of her and adds experience in the post.

“Our ability to play with different line-ups — go big, go small, have people available off the bench that can contribute and do great things for the team,” Paige Bueckers said in response to a question about how this season’s team differs from prior seasons. “So having different line-ups, meshing together in practice, throwing different people out there with different groups, different line-ups, I think, is something that’s been different this season.”

With Selection Sunday just days away and more parity than ever in women’s basketball, an opportunity approaches for UConn to return to the top of the sport, proving its staying power in college sports’ new world order. A projected No. 2 seed, the Huskies are firing on all cylinders at the right time of the year. Since losing to Tennessee on Feb. 6, the Huskies have won every game by at least 19 points, including a 29-point road win against the tournament’s projected overall No. 1 seed South Carolina. In the final season of her legendary UConn career, Bueckers has her best chance yet to be the centerpiece of a Huskies team that hangs a 12th banner in Storrs.

“[Paige] has a different cast of characters around her this year than she’s had previous years. Every year that she’s been in the tournament, we’ve been at a disadvantage in terms of missing someone that was really key for our team. In some cases two or three,” Auriemma said.

“So this is the first time we’re going into the tournament with most of the key pieces intact. I think that’s a great place for us to be.”

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