UConn expedition: Elite Huskies arrive to face resurgent Aztecs

By: BRIAN HIRO - Staff Writer | Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:36 PM PST ∞

SAN DIEGO -- The year before coach Beth Burns returned to San Diego State to rescue its women's basketball program from oblivion, a girls basketball player from San Diego was rewriting the state record book and sifting through dozens of college scholarship offers.

Burns never had a chance to recruit Charde Houston, a 6-foot-1 forward from San Diego High who in 2004 broke the California career scoring mark held by the legendary Cheryl Miller and selected powerhouse Connecticut from among a host of ardent suitors.

Of course, Burns wouldn't have had much to sell a prep superstar like Houston, given that she would produce a 3-24 record -- and a humiliating 0-16 in the Mountain West Conference -- in her first season back on Montezuma Mesa.

Who could have known at the time that the loss of perhaps the best girls basketball player in county history would have resulted in an invaluable opportunity to measure the progress of Burns' reclamation project, now in its third year?

The 8-1 Aztecs will host 8-0 UConn, ranked No. 2 in the nation, on Friday night at Cox Arena, and the presence of Houston -- now a senior -- on the Huskies' team is a big reason why.

Two years ago, UConn coach Geno Auriemma contacted Burns, an acquaintance of his since they were both college assistants on the East Coast in the early 1980s, to pitch a home-and-home series. Auriemma wanted to continue a tradition of giving his players -- Houston, in this case -- at least one game in their hometown while bringing the Huskies to San Diego for the first time. Burns wanted a marquee opponent as a yardstick game.

Both coaches fulfilled their wishes, and when the teams play Friday, San Diego State expects a crowd that will surpass its all-time record for a women's basketball game -- 4,311, against UCLA in 1978 at the San Diego Sports Arena. The Aztecs will travel to Storrs, Conn., for a return date next season.

"I've told our team that if you are willing to work hard, then you're allowed to dream big, and if you want to be great, you have to play great (teams)," Burns said Wednesday. "What UConn has personified in our sport is unparalleled, and it's an awesome opportunity for our team, our program, our university and the San Diego community."

With eight wins already, the Aztecs are only five short of equaling their best total in any season since 1996-97, which happened to be Burns' last year before she ended her first stint at the school to accept the head coaching job at Ohio State. But the Aztecs, whose only loss was to an underwhelming Indiana State team, realize that UConn resides in an entirely different -- even intimidating -- class of foe.

"A team of UConn's caliber -- the national championships, the Final Fours, the Elite Eights -- it doesn't get any better than that," San Diego State senior forward Shanna Demus said.

Indeed, Auriemma's Huskies, along with Tennessee, have towered over women's college basketball for most of the past 15 years. They have won five national titles (including three in a row from 2002-04), reached eight Final Fours (including five straight from 2000-04) and captured 15 Big East Conference regular-season crowns.

Counted among former UConn All-Americans are some of the biggest stars in women's basketball history: Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Swin Cash and Diana Taurasi.

The Huskies regularly draw sellout crowds to 10,167-seat Gampel Pavilion and are the country's only women's basketball program to have every game televised on national or local TV.

And it was all built by Auriemma, who has won 84 percent of his games in 23 seasons and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial and Women's Basketball halls of fame in 2006.

"Geno is the best coach I ever played for and, in my opinion, the best coach in college basketball," Lobo, the now-retired headliner of Auriemma's first national championship team in 1995, said in an e-mail. "His former players swear by him and keep a relationship with him long after graduation. He is a very demanding coach -- no one is tougher on his players -- and gets the most out of their talents and abilities."

It speaks to the heights that UConn has scaled under Auriemma that he faced minor grumbling from the program's rabid fan base after each of his past three teams failed to advance to the Final Four. If the current squad similarly falls short, it would mark the first time in nearly two decades that a Huskies senior class graduated without a Final Four appearance.

"It's a period of mourning at Connecticut," Auriemma said with a wry smile after the Huskies practiced at Cox Arena on Wednesday morning. "Some teams haven't been to a Final Four. What happened is we found ourselves rebuilding. Because when we lost (two-time national player of the year and current WNBA All-Star) Diana Taurasi (in 2004), we lost four players: our best point guard, our best two guard, our best small forward, our best power forward. Trying to replace somebody like that isn't easy.

"I think this is as close as we've been in the last couple years."

Burns calls the Huskies No. 1A, meaning they deserve to share the top spot with defending champ Tennessee.

Returning every player from last year's 32-4 team while adding consensus high school player of the year Maya Moore, UConn has steamrolled opponents by an average margin of almost 40 points (including decisive victories over No. 5 Stanford and No. 14 Duke) and is leading the country in both field-goal percentage and field-goal percentage defense.

The Huskies' depth should allow them to overcome the loss of starting guard Kalana Greene, who's out for the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee Monday.

"I'd be very surprised if they didn't get to the Final Four," Lobo said.

The Aztecs are still trying to crack the NCAA tournament field for the first time in more than 10 years. Even Auriemma and the Huskies, however, had to start somewhere.

"A perennial power in women's basketball is coming to San Diego State, and that in and of itself is exciting," Aztecs athletic director Jeff Schemmel said. "But I think it's doubly exciting because we have a pretty good product we're putting on the floor these days, too."

-- Contact staff writer Brian Hiro at b_hiro@hotmail.com.

B>Top dogs

By many measures, the UConn Huskies are the premier women's basketball program of the past two decades. A rundown of their notable accomplishments:

+ Five national championships (1995, 2000, 2002-04)

+ Eight Final Fours

+ 15 Big East regular-season titles

+ 13 Big East tournament titles

+ At least 30 wins in 12 of the last 14 seasons

+ Best record in the nation since 1995 (437-39, .918)

+ Eight first-round WNBA draft picks (two No. 1 overall)

+ Seven Olympians

+ 18 first-team All-Americans

+ 75 regular-season sellouts since 1997

-- Brian Hiro