The seeds for probably the most anticipated matchup of this ladies’s faculty basketball season have been planted many years earlier, within the halls of Scarsdale Excessive College in New York, the place Geno Auriemma was sizzling on the path of one of many sport’s most coveted recruits. As a part of his full-court press to persuade her, the Connecticut coach went as far as to enlist the assistance of her greatest pal, who would sooner or later make a reputation for herself in the identical world as Auriemma.
Lindsay Gottlieb tried her greatest to persuade her pal, Hilary Howard, on Connecticut, to no avail. However the relationship between Gottlieb and Auriemma remained. When Gottlieb injured her knee as a highschool senior, Auriemma reached out to supply his assist. It was throughout that restoration course of that Gottlieb first thought-about teaching, and over time, as she climbed by the ranks, Auriemma would supply common encouragement. When she led California to the Ultimate 4 in 2013, Auriemma, within the midst of a dynastic run with the Huskies, assured her it wouldn’t be the final.
“I remember him looking at me and saying, ‘Enjoy the first one. You’ll be back,” Gottlieb recalled this week.
USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb, left, greets Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma earlier than the Trojans’ loss within the Elite Eight of the NCAA event in April.
(Soobum Im / Getty Pictures)
It was Connecticut that may in the end preserve Gottlieb and USC out of the Ultimate 4 final season. And with each groups now on an analogous collision course this season, Gottlieb and Auriemma will meet once more Saturday for a marquee matchup that’s been billed as one of the consequential video games of the school basketball calendar.
The matchup pins not solely two of one of the best coaches in ladies’s faculty basketball towards one another once more, but in addition arguably its two greatest stars, USC’s JuJu Watkins and UConn’s Paige Bueckers.
That was sufficient, amid the groundswell of recent intrigue round ladies’s faculty basketball, to pique the curiosity of Fox, which put the sport in a coveted prime-time slot, the place it’s slated to comply with the community’s Saturday NFL sport. For USC, it’s one in every of 9 video games the crew will play on nationwide TV this season, six greater than final season.
“We thought it would be a great opportunity for both teams to test ourselves and one another, but also to put a really quality matchup on TV early,” Gottlieb mentioned. “We have a team we want to put on the biggest stage. We have a program that has aspirations to win in March, and you just can’t do that unless you’re playing high-quality games throughout the year.”
USC rides a six-game win streak into Saturday, throughout which the Trojans have gained their video games by a mean margin of 40 factors. UConn has been equally dominant, with wins over three ranked groups this season.
However the two contenders every slipped up of their hardest assessments thus far, as each fell of their respective matchups with No. 3 Notre Dame.
“Notre Dame was an early test that we obviously didn’t pass,” Gottlieb mentioned. “You want to be at your best early and then try and grow from there; but if you’re not, the alternative is to look in the mirror and get better and keep working on the things you think will help you get there. I do think we’ve grown since then.”
A lot of that course of since has centered on discovering extra firepower alongside Watkins, who Gottlieb says is now seeing “defenses created around stopping her.” Nonetheless, the sophomore famous person has managed to attain 20 factors or extra in all however one sport this season.
USC’s JuJu Watkins, proper, controls the ball in entrance of Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers in the course of the Elite Eight of the NCAA event in April.
(Steph Chambers / Getty Pictures)
Ahead Kiki Iriafen wasn’t on the roster when USC misplaced to UConn final March, however thus far has been one of many higher secondary scoring threats within the sport this season, averaging 18.7 factors per sport. However USC might have greater than Watkins and Iriafen alone to take down the Huskies.
That’s as a result of Connecticut has a fair deeper nicely of scorers behind Bueckers, who’s taking pictures an absurd 58% from the perimeter. Total, no crew in ladies’s faculty basketball has been hotter from the sphere this season than the Huskies, who’re one in every of 4 groups within the sport to make higher than 50% of their pictures.
UConn ahead Sarah Sturdy ought to make for a becoming foil to Iriafen because the Huskies’ greatest secondary scorer (17 factors per sport) and rebounding risk (8.3 rebounds per sport). She’s recent off a career-high efficiency towards Iowa State by which she scored 29.
“You have to worry so much about Paige,” Gottlieb mentioned, “that it opens things up for Sarah.”
That’s only one aspect of a chess match that ought to not solely present each powers with an early barometer of the place their seasons are headed, but in addition give the game a marquee early matchup to keep up its momentum.
That’s a chance, Gottlieb mentioned, she couldn’t flip down, when Fox first expressed curiosity.
“I’ve known for a long time that there’s a couple teams and a couple windows that get the exposure,” Gottlieb mentioned. “Really where we’ve tried to bring the program, it’s definitely significant.”
