Starting Five: How USC's coach got a 'front row seat' to the start of UConn's dynasty

When Lindsay Gottlieb was in high school out of Scarsdale, New York, she got to know Geno Auriemma on the recruiting trail, but not because the Hall of Fame head coach wanted her to come to UConn. Instead, he was after Gottlieb’s best friend, Hilary Howard (now Heick).

“Geno, I'm sure he would tell you, recruited her as hard as he recruited anyone,” Gottlieb said. “There were times at which he was recruiting her so hard, he would call me.”

“I tried to charm up Lindsay to try to help us get Hilary,” Auriemma said.

Ultimately, Howard picked Duke instead of the Huskies but that didn’t end the relationship. That very summer, both Gottlieb and Howard worked at UConn’s summer camp.

“Think about that now. If a recruit went elsewhere and then came to work your camp, that wouldn't go over that well these days with the transfer portal,” Gottlieb said.

The relationship between Gottlieb and Auriemma only grew from there. Gottlieb committed to play down the road at Brown and remained around the UConn program. For someone who described herself as Howard’s “nerdy best friend who loved basketball”, those experiences stuck with her.

“Geno welcomed all of us into what they were doing. So I wasn't recruited by UConn, but I felt I had a front-row seat to that explosion of women's college basketball. It was the (Jennifer) Rizzotti, (Rebecca) Lobo, Kara Wolters team. We would go up and watch practice. We would watch games. And so for me, that was a cool thing to see,” Gottlieb said. “He was really, really generous to me with his time, with his insights.”

After graduating from Brown in 1999, she began her coaching career as an assistant with Syracuse. Auriemma remained a valuable resource.

“When I got into coaching, it was, ‘How can I help? What do you need?’ I've always remembered that,” Gottlieb said. “So yeah, there's that connection there.”

Now, all these years later, the two will meet with a trip to the Final Four on the line.

“I hope she doesn't hold it against me that I didn't think she was good enough to play for us,” Auriemma said. “She did all right. She went to Brown and everything, she lived happily ever after. And here she is now with one of the best teams in the country.”

Other connections

There’s a few more more ties between the two programs. One of Gottlieb’s assistant coaches is Willnett Crockett, who played for the Huskies from 2002-06. A native of Los Angeles, she also spent 13 seasons as an assistant to Tonya Cardoza at Temple, who’s back on UConn’s staff.

Meanwhile, fifth year forward Kaitlyn Davis is from Norwalk, Connecticut. She arrived at USC this past fall after playing four seasons at Columbia.

“It's weird playing in this game but it's also a dream come true,” Davis said about playing UConn. “Growing up in Connecticut, you dream of being on the same court as them and as Geno.”

It does create a strange dynamic in the Davis household, though.

“Even my family back home, they're huge Huskies fans but they're like, ‘You've gotta get them on Monday,’” Davis said.

There’s not as much history between the matchup’s two stars: Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins. The two have met just once and it came at a high school all-star event in New York last offseason.

“We sat courtside at the game next to each other. We just kind of talked basketball and life, and I think that's the only time we really interacted,” Bueckers said. “You can tell she's got a good head on her shoulders. She's humble and hungry, and you could tell from that conversation that she wanted to make an impact right away and put her presence on the college game as a freshman.”

Inside the game plan

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