STORRS — During the UConn women’s basketball team’s ugly loss to South Carolina in the 2026 Final Four, coach Geno Auriemma saw frustration impact sophomore phenom Sarah Strong‘s game for the first time in her college career.
Strong, the consensus national player of the year in 2025-26, had one of her worst performances in a UConn jersey at the Final Four, logging 12 points and 12 rebounds on 25% shooting in the 62-48 defeat that ended the Huskies’ undefeated season. Strong grew so agitated during the game that she ripped her own jersey after a missed layup at the end of the third quarter, an uncharacteristic show of emotion from the famously-stoic superstar on the biggest stage.
Advertisement
It was the first truly meaningful loss Strong has experienced at UConn after helping power the program to its 12th national championship as a freshman in 2025, and it’s one that Auriemma believes will fuel her next season.
“The pressure that she puts on herself to make sure that she performs at a real high level, I think that bothered her, that she wasn’t able to play at the level that she expects from herself and that we needed from her,” Auriemma said Monday, speaking with media for the first time since the Final Four. “So that, of all the time that she’s been here — and there’s only been four losses I think in her college career — I think that one probably hit her the hardest … I think she she takes all that and personalizes it and internalizes it, and I think that she’s going to turn that into a real positive going forward.”
Strong’s underwhelming performance in the Final Four wasn’t a shock to Auriemma, partly because the sophomore was never fully healthy over the last two months of the season. Strong grappled with chronic calf inflammation that sidelined her for a game in early February, and Auriemma said she was only practicing about three days a week for the entire month of March.
This offseason, the priority for the superstar forward is rest. For the first time since 2021, she won’t compete with USA Basketball this summer in either 3-on-3 or 5-on-5 competition. Auriemma said Strong was worried about disappointing the national team when she turned down opportunities this year, but she ultimately understood that her body desperately needs the recovery time if she intends to lead the Huskies back to the NCAA championship next year.
Advertisement
“It’s such a long season, and she’s spent every summer playing USA Basketball … so the plan for her this summer is to do as little as possible,” Auriemma said. “It was typical Sarah: ‘I really want to do this, I feel like I have an obligation to do this, what are they going to think of me if I say no? … I said, if I put you on the spot, do you want to do this or do you not want to do this? Forget what anybody’s going to think. She goes, ‘I’d rather rest.’”
Auriemma has been through his fair share of brutal Final Four losses over 41 seasons at UConn, and the longtime head coach has learned to recognize the kind of response after a heartbreaking ending that elevates a team the following season. After the Huskies were upset by Stanford in the 2008 Final Four, Auriemma remembers telling the media as soon as the game ended that he knew the team would be back the next year. UConn went undefeated for two straight seasons after that loss, bringing home back-to-back championships in 2009 and ’10.
The 2000-01 team that fell to Notre Dame in the Final Four followed a similar trajectory. Auriemma said he could tell from the looks on players’ faces in the postgame locker room that they were never going to let a season end that way again. A year later, they completed an undefeated season to win the 2002 national championship, and Auriemma still believes that team was his greatest of all time.
Auriemma has also seen it things go the other way, where players didn’t take the losses personally enough and suffered the exact same fate the following year. How the 2026-27 team will respond remains to be seen, but he expects get some clarity over the next couple of months.
Advertisement
“A lot of it is your exit interviews with them, and you listen to what their interpretation of that game was. When we get back, usually they take a couple weeks off, so some of it is how quickly they’re back in the weight room, how quickly they’re back on the court on their own,” Auriemma said. “It’s getting harder, because kids today have short memories, so they move on to the next thing pretty quickly. But when we start some workouts in June during summer school, you’ll get a pretty good sense.”
Dom Amore: How Geno Auriemma processed a difficult night, began leading UConn women to what’s next
The Huskies enter next season with almost the exact same the core they had in 2025-26, and the team didn’t sign anyone out of the transfer portal for the first time since 2023-24. UConn lost two players to the portal, redshirt junior Ice Brady to Florida State and redshirt sophomore Ayanna Patterson to Kentucky, but neither had a significant role in the rotation during their four seasons in Storrs. The Huskies have never had a starter transfer out of the program since the portal was established in 2019.
UConn’s foundation is always built through high school recruiting, and Auriemma is notoriously picky about the transfers he brings in. Since 2019, the Huskies have signed just five players out of the portal, and all have been immediate contributors. With 10 returners entering 2026-27, Auriemma said there weren’t any available transfers who he felt would make an impact in UConn’s system.
Advertisement
“When you have like 90% of your team back from a year ago, I don’t think there’s a lot of people in the portal jumping up and down to want to come and put themselves in that position here,” Auriemma said. “There wasn’t anybody out there that we thought was a real game changer for us. Some years there are, and we didn’t see anybody in there that we thought could do it.”
Without any experienced newcomers, UConn’s biggest challenge is replacing the production of All-American guard Azzi Fudd, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft. Auriemma expects freshman standout Blanca Quinonez will emerge as a centerpiece for the Huskies, in part because her playing time will see a significant increase from the 20 minutes she averaged off the bench this season. The 6-foot-2 forward was UConn’s third-leading scorer in 2025-26, and she was spectacular during the 2026 tournament run up until the Final Four loss, where she found herself in foul trouble and never managed to get into a rhythm.
“For somebody that’s never played in the tournament … I thought she stepped in and played like a veteran,” Auriemma said. “There were moments where she was the best player on the floor, so for a young player to be able to do that and then going forward now, it’s something I’m excited about. I’m looking forward to giving her more and more opportunities, because she does need more opportunities. She does need to be out there for longer stretches, playing more minutes. That’s only going to make her even better, because when you’re young, you need to outplay your your mistakes. There’s obviously going to be a bunch of those, but there’s going to be a ton of unbelievable plays that she’s going to make next year.”
Auriemma is also optimistic about UConn’s pair of incoming freshmen. Olivia Vukosa, the No. 3 prospect in the 2026 class, will be one of the biggest players on the roster at 6-foot-5, but the McDonald’s All-American center also brings a versatile skillset as a passer and 3-point shooter that can give the Huskies different options in the frontcourt. Serbian guard Jovana Popovic also has the potential to help fill some of the void left by Fudd. The 5-foot-8 point guard has played professionally for several years in the First League of Serbia and was named the league’s MVP and Best Shooter at 17 years old in 2024-25.
Advertisement
“How many times have we been preseason No. 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5? Almost every single year, and I don’t think that’s going to change,” Auriemma said. “Putting ourselves in that situation to be part of however it goes, that’s basically the goal every year. You can see teams that were constantly (top 5) that are not even top 25 teams anymore, so it’s really a fragile thing that we’ve been able to keep together for a long, long time. That’s not going away.”
Why Final Four loss can give UConn women’s basketball the edge it lacked this season
