FORT WORTH, Texas — To the outside world, the UConn women’s basketball team’s success in the NCAA Tournament has become an inevitable truth of life. The sun rises, the Earth turns, and the Huskies make the Final Four.
But as his players celebrated at Dickies Arena on Sunday after a 70-52 win over Notre Dame in the Elite Eight, coach Geno Auriemma was almost in disbelief that this year’s squad is headed back to the Final Four for a third straight season holding a perfect 38-0 record.
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“We have a team that is so well connected … and they root for each other like no other team I’ve ever had,” Auriemma said on the court after he accepted the Forth Worth 1 regional championship trophy. “Carrying all that undefeated stuff is not the easiest thing in the world, but they’ve handled it with humbling grace, and I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder to take a team to the Final Four than this one.”
The Huskies understand in a theoretical sense that Auriemma is proud of them, but they were shocked to hear him say it so frankly into a microphone.
“He doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean, and he doesn’t give out compliments too often,” redshirt senior Azzi Fudd said. “So to hear him say that, it does mean a lot, and we feel the same way. We love this team so much, so it does mean the world to go to the Final Four with everyone.”
“He doesn’t really give those nice words to us often, but we know secretly deep down he really loves us and cares for us and wants the best for us,” sophomore phenom Sarah Strong added, glancing over at Auriemma with a small smirk.
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It was a bold statement from the Huskies coach, who has led 25 teams to the Final Four over his 41 years at the helm of the program. Twelve of those squads have gone on to bring home NCAA titles, including the 2025 team captained by superstar Paige Bueckers that ended a nine-year championship drought in storybook fashion. Six have gone undefeated en route to the national title, and six have brought home back-to-back championships.
So why has this Final Four team earned the title of Auriemma’s proudest?
“They’re not good enough to be doing this,” Auriemma said Sunday. “For them to carry an undefeated record up to this point, whose personality on that team makes you think, ‘oh look at them, they walk around like they own the place’? Nobody. They’re just a bunch of like, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ So I’m proud of them because it’s not easy to be undefeated, come all the way here and be able to handle it and end up going to the Final Four.”
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At the start of the season, Auriemma had no idea how high the ceiling for this team would be. UConn lost arguably the best player in the country in Bueckers, and her absence left a void both on the court and as voice of leadership in the locker room. The roster featured five newcomers, three of whom are essential pieces of the Huskies’ rotation, and Auriemma was prepared for growing pains.
But UConn hasn’t just won every game it’s played this year. It has dominated, from start to finish. The team is averaging a nation-leading 37.8-point margin of victory, and all but one of its 38 wins came by at least 14 points. The Huskies are in the midst of a 53-game winning streak, one victory shy of tying the fourth-longest streak in NCAA history recorded by Louisiana Tech from 1980-82. They have a plus-130 point differential in the tournament entering the Final Four, and at least three players have scored in double digits in all four matchups so far.
“We have three kind of high-level scorers, and then we have a bunch of guys who, they do their little part and then it all comes together and we win,” Auriemma said. “There are some teams that, when the season starts, I can tell if we just stay healthy and finish the season, we’re going to go to the Final Four. I don’t know that anybody was talking about that (this year) … I’m just proud of the way they’ve handled this entire thing, all the way through.”
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In Phoenix, the real gauntlet begins for the Huskies as they attempt to defend their 2025 championship. All four No. 1 seeds — UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina — advanced to the Final Four for the first time since 2018 and just the fifth time in the history of the women’s tournament. It’s also just the second time in tournament history that the same four teams have appeared in the Final Four in back-to-back seasons.
The last time it happened was in 1995 and 1996, when Tennessee, Georgia, Stanford and UConn made repeat appearances in the national semifinals. Exactly three decades later, history repeats itself: Two SEC teams, a squad from California and UConn will battle for the 2026 NCAA title.
“I refuse to watch any South Carolina tape, because they just scare me how good they are,” Auriemma joked after the Elite Eight. “People say ‘Hey, did you watch the Texas game?’ I said no, it’s frightening watching them play, how big and how talented they are. And UCLA, they’ve got a lot of guys back from last year’s team … And it’s supposed to be that way, right? The Final Four is supposed to be really, really hard.”
The four programs that earned No. 1 seeds in this year’s tournament have spent the entire season in a tier all their own. The teams have a combined record of 143-7, and only South Carolina and Texas have lost to opponents not competing in the Final Four. Texas delivered UCLA its lone loss of the season back in November, and the Longhorns gave South Carolina two of its three losses including one in the SEC Championship game. The Gamecocks also returned the favor, beating Texas in the second regular-season meeting between the conference rivals.
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The Huskies will put their unbeaten streak on the line at 7 p.m. Friday against a familiar foe in South Carolina. The programs have met twice in the national championship game in 2022 and ’25, but this will be their first collision in the Final Four.
“(When) you have an undefeated team like we have right now, you know how hard you’ve worked to get to (Final Four) weekend, so it’s almost like next weekend you let the air out and you go, ‘Let’s just play basketball, and whatever happens happens,’” Auriemma said. “I think getting over this hump and getting to next weekend, I think that will let the air out, and we’ll just relax and play some good offensive basketball.”
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