Wherever in the world they grew up, where they’d been playing, UConn women’s basketball represents something different. The Huskies are on TV in March, every March.
Of course, there’s a curiosity and a desire to be part of all that. Now five newcomers, including two experienced transfers, have joined the Huskies for the quest for championship No. 13. No getting around it, it’s different here.
“There is only one way to think about this place, it’s just greatness,” said Serah Williams, the senior power forward who transferred from Wisconsin. “You hear ‘UConn’ and you just think, ‘success.’ … The expectation to win, how to do everything, everything right, everything perfect. You have to exert more because now you’re playing to new standard.”
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Over the years, it has been shown that it is not for everyone. Long before “portal” became a household word, players who couldn’t handle all that Williams described transferred out. Those who stay make the adjustment to get what they came for.
“The expectation level that they have, ‘This is Connecticut, it’s going to be different,’” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “The expectations their teammates have for them. ‘Hey, coach thinks you’re good enough to play here, you better prove it every day.’ Then the expectations that come with, ‘We’ve been watching you play on TV all the time, you’re the team everyone wants to beat and now I’m a part of that.’ That was an adjustment for a lot of kids.
“Every possession matters, every drill matters a lot, not that it doesn’t at other places, but the competition on the floor is different. If you don’t get it right, the next three are going to get it right. Everything is amplified.”
It takes time, Auriemma noted, to adjust to the place where every game is almost a one-game season, every loss seems like the end of the world in a place where there hasn’t been more than six in a season since 2004.
“I see it in freshmen,” Auriemma said. “You’ll lose a couple of games and you’ll see the look on their face, like ‘Why does it look like a relative died in here? We’re 5-1, what’s the big deal?’ And sometimes I want to go, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ But it does feel like you’re never supposed to lose here.”
After 11 national championships between 1995 and 2016, UConn did not win No. 12 until last April, though they reached the Final Four every year but one. Reaching the Final Four has become a baseline achievement.
“The standard here is so different than anywhere else,” said senior Caroline Ducharme. “People come here and they’re like, ‘I’ve never worked his hard, I’ve never had this much expected of me.’ So the expectation that every little thing matters, I don’t think anywhere else pays attention to that level of detail the way we do.”
Williams, originally from Brooklyn, put her name in the portal last March and was surprised to hear from UConn. “It was more of, ‘You just won a national championship without me,’” she said. “The need, for me, I asked them, ‘Why do you want me here.’ I expressed my areas of growth I wanted and I decided this was the perfect place for me to spend my last year of college.”
Kayleigh Heckel is coming cross country, departing Southern Cal and joining the UConn women’s basketball team for the 2025-26 season. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Top of mind for Williams is the chance to play in March. She never played in the NCAA Tournament in three years at Wisconsin. Kayleigh Heckel, a sophomore, played a year at Southern California, which made it deep into the tournament. Freshmen Kelis Fisher, a peppery Baltimorean, Blanca Quinonez, who was born in Ecuador but has been playing in Italy, and Gandy Malou-Mamel, from Ireland, are the others who have taken this plunge into a different basketball world.
Quinonez wasn’t sure she wanted to play in the U.S, until she started following March Madness.
“If you want to arrive at the goals that you have, you need to get steps,” she said. “And this is one of the biggest steps to get what I want to get. UConn, here is everything you need to have to get better and improve yourself.”
Connecticut will get its first look at the Huskies on Monday at 2 p.m. against Boston College at Mohegan Sun, an exhibition game, but there will be 8,000 pairs of eyes in the building, countless more outside. Here the newcomers enter the fishbowl.
“Eventually, they all get acclimated to it, eventually they do,” Auriemma said. “It’s just a dynamic that can only be experienced. You can’t prepare for it.”
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No Silver mettle
If you missed it, NBC Connecticut’s Gabby Lucivero took on NBA Commissioner Adam Silver this week at an event promoting the league’s new TV setup, a short, but telling exchange. Lucivero asked about the NBA/WNBA opposition to moving the Connecticut Sun to Hartford.
“You can choose to sell your team in your same market, you cannot choose to sell your team to a different market,” the commish began. “That’s where it stands right now.”
Lucivero, having none of it, said, “Hartford is in the market.”
Silver snapped: “No it’s not. (Wow, good comeback) … A marketing region is different. A team only has the right to play in the market they’re in. That would be like saying the Brooklyn Nets could move to Manhattan because it’s in the market.”
What? No one is proposing the Sun move into another team’s territory, that’s an utterly irrelevant analogy. Lucivero called this semantics. “No, that’s not semantics,” Silver insisted. “I don’t think it’s semantics to say the Brooklyn Nets could not move to Manhattan.”
Lucivero represented the frustration here in Connecticut over all this laughably flawed logic that’s threatening to whisk the team to Houston. You almost wish Silver would just say the quiet part out loud, that they want the franchise out of New England so they can fleece a future Boston buyer of their choosing for an expansion team several years from now. The Sun can’t play in Hartford … because Adam Silver says they can’t.
“There’s some confusion,” Silver, by now a little tongue-tied, told Lucivero. “The territory in which a team can market itself is different from a team moving to a different area, and the Mohegan Sun does not have the right to move the team. No team has the right to move, WNBA or NBA, that’s a decision from their partners at the league. That’s not on the table right now, them moving the team.”
If they want to sell the team, but keep it at Mohegan Sun, that would be perfectly fine, he said. Sure, except that the reason they have been offered more than $300 million is because the new owners want to play in a bigger arena.
A signature performance, all in all, from the guy who said in September that, if fans can’t afford to watch NBA games on TV, they can just watch highlights.
Anyway, I’m told our local leaders are still looking for ways to put pressure on the league to let the team stay in Connecticut. My free legal advice: Stay on point, stick to the logic, financial and especially the legal aspects of this, stay away from the “Basketball Capital” and UConn championships theme. They won’t be nudged by that.
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Sunday short takes
*Don’t forget that WFSB-TV, Channel 3, and sister station WWAX is filling some of the void in the UConn TV package with pregame shows for all men’s and women’s home games, and a live broadcast of the men’s exhibition game vs. Michigan State on Oct. 28.
*Before “the curse” was reversed, the Red Sox’s AL East championships between 1986-90 were a big deal in these parts. Mike Greenwell, who died this week at 62, was a big part of those teams, especially in 1988, when he was MVP runner-up. His place in Red Sox history is one of honor.
*The Windsor High Athletic Hall of Fame banquet is Nov. 1, reception at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 at La Notte in East Windsor. The 2025 inductees: Wayne Dobrutsky (football and baseball), Terrance Knighton (football, basketball), Paul Lepak (soccer), Cole Ormsby (football), Michael Phang (soccer, track), Mairin Dudek (soccer, softball), Kelsey Jepsen (swimming), Dominique Fox (coach), Neil Beaulieu (Distinguished Contributor). For ticket information, contact Celeste Over at Sage Park Middle School, 860-687-2030.
*Liz Mueller, a decorated runner at Waterford High before turning to boxing to become a national Golden Gloves champ, World Cup silver medalist and world lightweight champ, will be among the new inductees to the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame on Oct. 18 6 p.m. at the Mohegan Sun ballroom. Matt Godfrey, six-time New England Golden Gloves champ, and Scott “Sandman” Pemberton will be inducted with contributors Peter Manfredo Sr., Joe Cusano, and the late Steve Epstein.
World champ Katie Taylor will be honored as Pro Fighter of the Year. Now residing in Vernon, training at the Manchester Ring of Champions Society, Taylor is working with Trainer of the Year Ross Enamait of Waterford. Tickets can be purchased at eventbrite.com.
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*Seymour’s Nick Anglace, driving his UConn car, was involved in a crash in his last SK Light race of the season at Stafford Oct. 3. He says he’s doing fine, and the car can be repaired or rebuilt in his shop fairly quickly.
*The Rangers reassigned goalie Callum Tung, one of the stars of UConn’s run last year, from the Wolf Pack to Bloomington of the ECHL. Hartford will start the season with Dylan Garand and Talyn Boyko in the crease.
*UConn grad and East Lyme native Pete Walker has been the Blue Jays’ pitching coach since 2012, working for four different managers. Jays pitching decisions, going with rookie Trey Yesavage over veteran starters like Max Scherzer, and the eight-man bullpen strategy for Game 4, in which Walker certainly had a respected voice, were big factors in Toronto’s Division Series victory.
*Seems like everybody sensed this Bill Belichick comeback could be a disaster except the people at UNC who decided to hire him.
Last word
Watching the MLB postseason, do you ever wonder how many World Series the Yankees might’ve won if Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter worked this well together when they were teammates?
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