I remember the first time I watched UConn beat Tennessee. It was their first meeting: a regular season match up between the perennial powerhouse against the upstart Huskies. UConn won that game by 11 points at Gampel, and later that year beat Tennessee again to win the National Championship.
Those early years were something. Games played on Saturday at noon on CBS. Every one an absolute battle. Bodies on the floor (and not just Jen Rizzotti launching herself at loose balls), everyone leaving the court bruised and battered. It was a blast. UConn took the early series lead, winning the first three meetings. But Tennessee came roaring back and for the next several years the teams traded wins and losses on the game’s biggest stage. Two heavyweights going blow-for-blow with each other.
But it all started to shift when a hot young recruit took her talents across the country to Storrs, Connecticut. During Diana Taurasi’s tenure, UConn and Tennessee played eight times, and UConn won seven of them. By the time she graduated in 2004, UConn was riding a six-game winning streak against the Lady Vols that included three Final Four meetings – two in the National Championship.
By the final few years of the rivalry things were getting really funky. The pure, unbridled hatred Pat and Geno felt for each other pervaded everything between them, both on and off the court. By the time the Great Maya Moore Recruiting Saga occurred in 2006, the writing was on the wall. And when Tennessee officially decided not to schedule anymore, none of us were really surprised. Tennessee was no longer the apex of women’s college basketball. That title belonged to UConn. Tennessee fans will tell you it wasn’t sour grapes (they’ve got some wild conspiracy theory, go check it out, it’s hilarious), but everyone who had been following things since the beginning knew that the string of losses on the court and on the recruiting trail – as well as the fact that Geno and Pat couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other, was the real reason it all went to hell. And thus ended the best rivalry in the history of women’s college basketball.
Time passed. Tennessee and UConn no longer faced each other in the post season either, and Tennessee’s program continued to falter. And then Pat got sick, and she and Geno seemed to bury the hatchet. The Church of Women’s Basketball has canonized Pat Summit, so much of the rivalry’s testiness – and much of its appeal – is no more. Because let’s be really honest. The rivalry was always more Geno v Pat than UConn v Tennessee. Geno and Holly Warlick have no history. In fact, this game will be played to benefit the Pat Summit Foundation. The antipathy between the teams – and, to a lesser degree the team’s fans – has dissipated.
Tennessee is no longer the program we remember. The days of Kara Lawson and Candace Parker and the Three Meeks are history. Tennessee hasn’t made a Final Four since 2008, and in the last two seasons was bounced in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Heck, they’re not even the best team in the SEC anymore, firmly behind both South Carolina and Mississippi State.
So while I am thrilled that we get to play Tennessee again, and even more thrilled that we can go back to talking shit to our most-loathed rival, things will never be the same. Women’s basketball has moved past UConn and Tennessee as the best, and really, only teams to watch. The field of great teams is much wider now. But that doesn’t mean UConn fans won’t turn up for that game in January 2020. Oh, you know we’ll all be there.
In fact, this is also a promising sign that UConn Athletics is recognizing the value in our history. That’s been a common complaint from fans, and one you’ve seen and heard often from all of us here at ADB. At minimum, getting this game back on the schedule shows that they’re listening and trying. This is the kind of stuff we love in Connecticut. Give us big ole heaping servings of nostalgia, because at the moment, it feels like it’s all we have left. But Tennessee is a cautionary tale. The best can’t stay the best forever, no matter how good they used to be. While they lost Pat, far too soon, we still have Geno prowling the sidelines. But it’s twilight in Storrs, Connecticut. And this rivalry, a shadow of its former self, will certainly be a reminder of that.
But next winter, I’ll suit up in my beloved Husky blue to cheer my face off for a UConn-Tennessee women’s basketball game. It’s been too damn long.
