The seeds of this women’s college basketball season’s most anticipated showdown were planted decades earlier, in the halls of Scarsdale High School in New York, where Geno Auriemma was on the trail of one of the sport’s most coveted recruits. As part of his all-court pressure to convince her, the Connecticut coach even went so far as to enlist the help of her best friend, who would one day make a name for herself in the same world as Auriemma.
Lindsay Gottlieb She tried her best to convince her friend, Hilary Howard, about Connecticut, but to no avail. But the relationship between Gottlieb and Auriemma remained. When Gottlieb injured his knee as a high school senior, Auriemma reached out to offer help. It was during that recovery process that Gottlieb first considered coaching, and over the years, as she rose through the ranks, Auriemma would regularly offer encouragement. When he led California to the Final Four in 2013, Auriemma, in the midst of a dynastic career with the Huskies, assured him it wouldn’t be the last.
“I remember he looked at me and said, ‘Enjoy the first one.’ You’ll be back,” Gottlieb recalled this week.
It was Connecticut that finally keep Gottlieb and USC out of the Final Four the last season. And with both teams now on a similar collision course this season, Gottlieb and Auriemma will meet again on Saturday for an important showdown that has been billed as one of the biggest games on the college basketball calendar.
The matchup once again pits not only two of the best coaches in women’s college basketball, but also its two biggest stars, USC. juju watkins and the University of Connecticut Paige Buecker.
That was enough, amid the flurry of new intrigue surrounding women’s college basketball, to pique the interest of Fox, which placed the game in a coveted prime time slot, where Saturday’s NFL game is scheduled to follow of the chain. For USCIt is one of nine games the team will play on national television this season, six more than last season.
“We thought it would be a great opportunity for both teams to test ourselves and each other, but also to show a high-quality matchup on television from the beginning,” Gottlieb said. “We have a team that we want to take to the biggest stage. We have a program that has aspirations of winning in March, and that can’t be achieved unless you play high-quality games all year long.”
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USC is riding a six-game winning streak into Saturday, during which the Trojans have won their games by an average margin of 40 points. UConn has been equally dominant, with wins over three ranked teams this season.
But both contenders made mistakes in their toughest tests to date, as both fell in their respective matchups with No. 3 Notre Dame.
“Notre Dame was one of the first tests that we obviously didn’t pass,” Gottlieb said. “You want to be at your best from the beginning and then try to grow from there; But if not, the alternative is to look in the mirror, improve, and continue working on the things you believe will help you achieve it. “I think we’ve grown since then.”
Since then, much of that process has focused on finding more firepower alongside Watkins, who Gottlieb said is now seeing “defenses built to stop her.” Still, the second-year superstar has managed to score 20 points or more in all but one game this season.
Forward Kiki Iriafen He wasn’t on the roster when USC lost to UConn last March, but he’s been one of the best secondary scoring threats in the sport so far this season, averaging 18.7 points per game. But USC may need more than just Watkins and Iriafen to defeat the Huskies.
This is because Connecticut has an even deeper source of scorers behind Bueckers, who is shooting an absurd 58% from the perimeter. Overall, no women’s college basketball team has been hotter from the field this season than the Huskies, who are one of four teams in the sport making more than 50% of their shots.
UConn forward Sarah Strong should be a suitable complement to Iriafen as the Huskies’ top secondary scorer (17 points per game) and rebounding threat (8.3 rebounds per game). He just turned in the best performance of his career against Iowa State, scoring 29.
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“You have to worry so much about Paige,” Gottlieb said, “that it opens things up for Sarah.”
That’s just one facet of a chess match that should not only provide both powers with an early barometer of where their seasons are headed, but also give the sport an early showdown to maintain its momentum.
That’s an opportunity, Gottlieb said, that he couldn’t turn down when Fox first expressed interest.
“I’ve known for a long time that there are a couple of teams and a couple of windows that get exposure,” Gottlieb said. “Really where we’ve tried to take the program is definitely significant.”
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.