How last year's loss to Tennessee sparked UConn to a national championship

360 days ago, UConn women’s basketball traveled to Knoxville and suffered an 80-76 loss at the hands of Tennessee. It was the Huskies’ third defeat of the season and their third time wilting in a big game.

UConn hasn’t lost since. The Huskies finished the regular season on a seven-game winning streak, cruised through the Big East Tournament, then dominated the NCAA Tournament en route to a 12th national championship.

That loss to Tennessee proved to be the wake-up call UConn needed. The Huskies hit their lowest point of the season and used it as fuel for their ascent towards the title.

“They responded really well,” Geno Auriemma said about the loss. “It was a game that we could have won and didn't win — and I think that probably is worse than if you go play and you never had a chance to win, you play lousy. But we played well enough to win that game and didn't. That was probably the most disappointing part. That was hard for the players to get over. But we did.”

While UConn dealt with recurring issues in each of its three losses — namely 3-point shooting — the problems ran deeper. The Huskies seemed to be missing an “it” factor and consistently melted in big moments.

At Notre Dame, UConn rallied from an 11-point halftime deficit to pull within one late in the third quarter. Then the Huskies gave up a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to Hannah Hidalgo and let the Irish extend the lead back to 10 points in a matter of minutes.

When UConn hosted USC, it erased an 18-point deficit in the second half and eventually took a 65-64 lead with 4:30 remaining. From there, the Huskies missed every potential game-changing shot down the stretch while the Trojans made the plays necessary to win.

The loss at Tennessee followed a similar script. UConn tied it with 2:07 left, only to be out-scored 6-2 the rest of the way.

Auriemma perfectly articulated the Huskies’ problems postgame.

“Stat sheets lie a lot,” he said. “There were big plays that had to be made, big stops that we had to get, big buckets that we have to make in crucial points of the game. We didn't make them and when two good teams are playing, that's the difference maker.”

To that point in the season, UConn had coasted on being good enough. The Huskies consistently handled business against lesser non-conference competition and Big East teams, but their flaws were laid bare in each defeat.

After Tennessee, UConn finally realized something had to change.

It started with the head coach, who had responded to the first two losses with a patient, understanding approach. He seemed unbothered and almost treated his team’s sub-par performances with a shrug of the shoulders.

That attitude went away when the Huskies returned from Knoxville. On his radio show that week, Auriemma ripped into his team. He called out Bueckers for having a “horrible game” and not demanding the ball in big moments. He said Jana El Alfy needed to “grow up a little bit” and then bemoaned UConn’s 19-35 performance on layups. Auriemma even pointed the finger at himself and the coaches.

“I don’t think we coached these guys as well as we coached some of the other guys,” he said. “That’s evident when you watch us play on the floor, that we look like a poorly coached team. And that’s me and my staff.”

The coach added an important caveat to his comments, though.

“The reality of the situation is from the first part of March to the end of March, you’ve got four weekends where you’ve gotta be really, really good,” Auriemma said. “That’s a little bit more manageable than ‘You’ve gotta be able to be consistent for four months.’”

For the Huskies to reach that level, they had to accept they weren’t as good as they thought they were. They began to understand that the way they operated up to that point wouldn’t be enough to get them over the hump.

At long last, UConn committed to becoming a great team.

“There were subtle things that we were nonchalant about. How good is our off the ball defense? How good is that rebounding? How good is our spacing? It's good enough to win most of the time… They saw what would happen if we continued to do it that way,” Auriemma said.

The Huskies didn’t make any big, sweeping changes, though. Instead, they honed in on the small stuff.

“You start to look in the mirror, start looking at the film and you start seeing things that, if they don't get fixed, this is going to happen again in the NCAA Tournament,” Auriemma said. “We just became better at the little things. We became more detail-oriented. We became way more engaged in ‘let's take this film session seriously. Let's take this practice seriously. Let's take this drill (seriously) because what we're trying to teach is going to be really, really important.’”

Those changes took effect quickly.

11 days after the Huskies lost to Tennessee, they traveled to South Carolina for their final non-conference showdown of the season. Expectations weren’t high for UConn since it had dropped seven straight regular season top-10 matchups dating back to Nov. 2022 and hadn’t beaten the Gamecocks in four years. It didn’t help that South Carolina had won 71 consecutive games at home, either.

A different team took the court that day for the Huskies. They blew South Carolina out, 87-58, behind an utterly dominant performance. For the first time all year, UConn played up to its potential.

“This is in them,” Auriemma said afterwards. “Can it come out every day? I don't know. But now we know it's in them.”

That version of the Huskies came out again during the NCAA Tournament. They moved past Oklahoma and USC in the regionals, then bludgeoned UCLA and South Carolina in the Final Four to capture their first national title in nine years.

Without the loss to Tennessee, that run might not have happened.

Now, almost one year later, UConn comes into Sunday’s matchup with the Vols on a 38-game winning streak and as national title favorites. The Vols don’t look like a legitimate threat to pull off another upset, though Auriemma hopes the Huskies can once again learn plenty about themselves from the contest.

“That's why you play these games. Had we not played that game (at Tennessee last year), we maybe wouldn't have been in a position to address all those things,” Auriemma said. “That might be the case tomorrow. Something might come up tomorrow, two or three things, that if you don't play these games, maybe there's a chance you'll never find out what those things are.”

UConn will also look to wrap up its revenge tour. Last season, the Huskies lost to Notre Dame, USC and Tennessee. So far this year, they embarrassed the Trojans on their home floor and handed the Irish a 38-point loss — the largest margin of victory by either team in the history of the rivalry. Now, they’ll look to deliver payback to the Vols.

“Going into the season, USC, Notre Dame and Tennessee were the three teams that beat us last year. So I think [the players] put an ‘X’ on them in the calendar,” Auriemma said. “So yeah, that probably stands out for them, for sure.”

UConn and Tennessee have met in the national championship game four times: 1995, 2000, 2003 and 2004 — all victories for Auriemma’s side. The Huskies also took down the Vols in the national semifinal to win in 2002.

In 2025, UConn didn’t need to go through its arch-rival to win it all. Instead, Tennessee provided the assist that helped the Huskies snap their nine-year title drought and capture their 12th national championship.