At the midway point of her college career, there isn’t much Sarah Strong still has to accomplish. She won a national championship as a freshman, then followed it up by being named the consensus National Player of the Year this past season.

Strong arrived in Storrs as college-ready as any high schooler thanks to a well-rounded game that lacked any real holes. At 6-2, she has the size to play down low but also has the ball-handling, shooting and skill to operate on the perimeter. Strong can step into any position on the floor and not skip a beat.

She puts that talent to good use, too. As a sophomore, Strong led UConn in points (18.4), rebounds (7.7), steals (3.4) and blocks (1.6). She ranked second on the team in assists (3.8) and third in 3-point percentage (40.4). Strong also totaled the most Win Shares in the nation with 9.5 — 1.1 more than Hannah Hidalgo in second place.

But despite piling a career’s worth of accolades into just two seasons, the Huskies insist Strong can be even better as a junior. They believe there’s another step she can take.

“I think with Sarah, her ceiling is limitless,” Ashlynn Shade said. “I don’t think you can really set the bar for her. I mean, she can literally do anything and everything.”

Strong has carried a heavy load from the moment she stepped on campus. While some of the program’s all-time greats eased their way in after joining talent-laden rosters, Strong didn’t have that luxury.

Before she even played a game at UConn, Auriemma declared she’d “significantly change the trajectory of our program.” After the season-opener, the coach said that Strong needed to “play like she’s an All-American”.

Despite her youth, she didn’t crack under the pressure. Instead, she helped lead the Huskies to their first national championship in nine years.

Strong never had to do it entirely on her own, though. Bueckers soaked up most of the spotlight in 2024-25 while last year, Strong shared the burden with Azzi Fudd.

Now, for the first time in her career, it all falls on the junior. This is, undoubtedly, her team. Strong has nowhere else to look.

“Her freshman year and last year, I thought Sarah played like a reluctant star,” Auriemma said. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll take the shot, but maybe Paige should take it.’ Or, ‘I’ll try this, but maybe I shouldn’t.’ There’s no one to defer to this year. You’re expected to be the number one go-to (player), without question, every single possession.”

Leadership does not come naturally to Strong. With a famously reserved personality, she’s quiet, self-conscious and more comfortable blending in than standing out.

Strong spent the entire summer trying to change that.

“I’ve probably gotten more vocal, more confident voicing my opinion and what I see on the court,” she said in October.

“I feel like she's really working hard on being a vocal leader for us,” Blanca Quiñonez added. “She knows that all of us want to listen to her, so I feel like she's been working hard and she's more present.”

The coaching staff didn’t need to sit Strong down, name her the team captain and explain that she had to start speaking up. She took the initiative herself when the Huskies reconvened on campus for summer workouts. Even though Strong couldn’t participate in those sessions while recovering from an Achilles injury, she used that time to find her voice.

“Sarah’s pretty smart. I think she knows a lot of our success depends on her,” Auriemma said. “I think she knows that. She’d be crazy not to because you look at it and say, ‘Well, if I don’t do it, where’s it going to come from?’ So there’s that need… Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to fill that role.”

The intention was there from the start, though Strong still needed some guidance early on.

“Maybe it was even in June, I said, ‘Look, if you don’t say something, somebody else will and you’re going to have to live with what they say. If you think you know the right thing to do, then you need to say it. Don’t leave it to someone else,’” he relayed.

Slowly but surely, Strong started to find her way.

“I don't think there was one specific moment. She just started saying little things more often. We would be in a pickup (game) in the summer and we would call a timeout; all of a sudden, Sarah is chiming in to say something. It's like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is really cool for her.’ So now that it's become more of a normal thing, it's just becoming a really great impact for us.”

Strong also had to develop her personal style of leadership.

In the exhibition against Texas, she expressed her displeasure with her teammates for their effort level on an inbounds under the basket. But usually, she takes a different tact. Strong’s willing to say whatever needs to be said, but she’s not a yeller. She just has questions.

“She's not afraid to say anything,” Ziebell said. “She was never harsh at all. I think that’s just who she is. It's not harsh. I think if she makes a comment, she's gonna ask you a question… It's a very unique approach because she'll question and then try to work with you that way.”

That vocal leadership remains a work in progress, though. In UConn’s first preseason contest — her first opportunity to lead the Huskies in game action — Strong felt she didn’t say enough, so she set out to change that against Texas.

“I’m definitely trying really hard, but after the last exhibition game, I don’t think I showed up in that way at all,” she said. “So I wanted to make it known that I was here this game.”

Because of Strong’s position on the team — not to mention her typically reserved personality — her words carry even more weight with her teammates. She’s the obvious leader, even if she’s not a natural.

“When Sarah decides to say something, when she does say something, no matter what it is, everybody just is quiet and they listen,” Auriemma said. “So the more she takes advantage of that, the better for us. And she's been doing that.”

“She is the first one to say anything when we need it to be said,” Ziebell said. “Everyone really expects her to voice her opinion and it weighs a lot.”

Ultimately, the better Strong gets at using her voice, the better UConn will be this season.

“She's becoming more of a leader, which is as important as how many points she's going to score, rebounds she's going to get,” Auriemma said.

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Last season, Strong took home every award under the sun despite not being fully healthy. In June, while playing for USA Basketball at the 3×3 World Cup in Mongolia, she injured her Achilles. The ailment lingered for much of the next calendar year.

“I felt it throughout my everyday life,” Strong admitted this past June.

UConn tried to manage it throughout the season and even sat Strong against Butler on Feb. 7 to give her a break. But the injury worsened down the stretch to the point that she “maybe practiced three days” during the month of March, according to the head coach.

“The entire tournament, it was a little bit of a struggle,” Auriemma said.

Once the 2025-26 season ended, UConn focused on getting Strong healthy. The two sides agreed it’d be best for her to take the summer off from basketball, which meant sitting out Huskies’ offseason workouts and declining all national team opportunities. It wasn’t easy for Strong to say no to USA Basketball — beyond the obligation she felt, she worried about hurting her chances for future call-ups — but ultimately did what was best for herself.

“I said, ‘If I put you on the spot, do you want to do this or do you not want to do this? Forget what anybody's going to think of you,’” Auriemma recounted. “She goes, ‘I'd rather rest.’ But there's always that guilt that she feels when she feels like she's letting you down.”

“My body needs it,” she said.

So instead of being on the court with her teammates, Strong’s summer consisted of rehab, weight lifting, pilates and a lot of watching from the sidelines. She also put an emphasis on nutrition and sleep.

“It was kind of weird not being able to play basketball throughout the summer,” Strong admitted.

The break proved necessary, though. Now, Strong enters her junior year rested, refreshed and free from the nagging Achilles.

“There is a little bit of a spring in her step. I've seen it in practice,” Auriemma said. “They brought her back slowly so it was a little bit here, a little bit there in practice. Then when it became full go, just like today (against Army), she went 17 minutes straight. She went all the way to three minutes left in the half and didn't look worse for wear. She can do that, but I don't want to use it all up this early. But I do think the benefits are real and they're noticeable.”

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Every UConn great has suffered a career-changing loss.

For some, it came early. As a freshman, Breanna Stewart managed just five points in a triple-overtime loss to Notre Dame in the regular season finale, just two weeks before she took over the world in the NCAA Tournament and led the Huskies to a national title. Diana Taurasi went 1-15 from the field (and 0-11 from three) in a Final Four loss to Notre Dame during her freshman season. She responded by winning the next three national championships.

Others didn’t experience it until later. Rebecca Lobo had as many turnovers as points (11) in an Elite Eight loss to UNC in 1994. The next season, UConn went undefeated to claim its first title thanks to Lobo, the National Player of the Year.

That loss didn’t arrive for Paige Bueckers until February of her fifth season. When the Huskies fell to Tennessee on the road, Auriemma put the blame squarely on Bueckers. In film review the next day, he called the superstar out for both poor performance and inadequate leadership. UConn eventually rallied to win its 12th national championship on the back of Bueckers.

For Strong, that crossroads came in the final game of her sophomore season. In the Final Four, she struggled to deal with the defensive attention and physicality that South Carolina threw at her. Strong couldn’t contain her frustration and after missing a shot as the third quarter expired, she took her anger out on her jersey, accidentally ripping it in the process.

It was fitting that Strong donned a generic No. 55 jersey over the final 10 minutes. By the time the final buzzer sounded on a 62-48 loss, she didn’t look anything like herself. Strong ended up with just 12 points on 4-16 shooting.

Now comes the response. That is what defined the careers of previous program greats like Lobo, Taurasi, Stewart and Bueckers. They didn’t crumble after the loss. They used it as fuel.

Auriemma hopes Strong will do the same.

“You have to go home and go, ‘I was National Player of the Year, but we lost,’” Auriemma said in June. It’s funny how that works. You can have an unbelievable individual season but what sticks most with her is that we lost. That’s probably what’s going to drive her this coming year, more so than, ‘I was National Player of the Year, I have to prove that again.’ No. ‘We lost and I have to prove I can win this.’ That’s what’s going to happen.”

“I think that she's going to turn that into a real positive going forward.”

When Taurasi arrived in Storrs, she joined a team that, looking back, featured six All-Americans, nine WNBA Draft picks and two Naismith Hall of Famers — not including Taurasi herself. She didn’t even win Big East Freshman of the Year in part due to all the talent that surrounded her. When UConn won a national championship in 2002, only the Associated Press and WBCA named her an All-American.

Then came Taurasi’s junior year. Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams had all graduated. Taurasi was left with a group that didn’t feature a single other future All-American. In fact, only one other Husky — Ann Strother — went on to earn an All-Big East First Team nod.

But Taurasi had waited her turn. She was ready. Over the next two years, she became Diana Taurasi.

“When you start getting into your junior year and you look around and go, ‘It's my turn,’ the ones that can really handle that just take off,” Auriemma said. “The first week of practice, I said, ‘CD, I think we can win this thing again,’ — just because of her. She went from, ‘Go ahead, guys, do your thing. I'm just here to help,’ (during her first two seasons) to ‘I'm going to show you why I'm the best player in the country.’”

Strong has already done far more than Taurasi did at the same point in their careers. Even still, Auriemma believes Strong can make a sizable leap entering her junior season, just as Taurasi did.

“I want it to be. I hope it is,” Auriemma said when asked if the comparison between Strong and Taurasi is apt. “I’m going to try my best to make sure that it is.”

“I mean, she was National Player of the Year and it’s pretty hard to get that much better,” he added later. “But it's not that hard to get better at some things that she wants to get better at. I think what we'll see is a much more aggressive Sarah, a much more intentional [Sarah]… Whatever we've seen the last two years, which is pretty incredible, I think there is more that she has, and we're going to see this year because I've seen it in practice already.”

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