Why UConn still values the Big East regular season championship

With a 72-53 win over Creighton on Thursday, UConn women’s basketball clinched the 2024-25 Big East regular season title with one game still to go. That’s nothing new for the Huskies — they’ve captured 12 straight conference regular season crowns and 31 overall — but they still make sure not to take it for granted.

“I don't want it to all of a sudden be, ‘Well, it's national championship or bust at UConn.’ That winning regular season championships doesn't matter anymore. Because it does matter and we've always made it matter. It's always been important to us,” Geno Auriemma said.

“We're trying to get three championships. The first one is the Big East,” Paige Bueckers added. “So trying to prove throughout the whole entire season that we're the best team in the league, regardless of who we're playing, it's always something that we want to strive for.”

The way UConn won this championship proved unique, though. Whereas in previous years, the rest of the league simply fell behind an undefeated Huskies squad, Creighton came into Thursday’s contest just one game back. UConn needed to win in order to secure the title outright as opposed to sharing it with the Bluejays.

“If they would have won tonight, then we'd be sharing a title. So it wasn't like we were playing the 8th place team or the 10th place team,” Auriemma said. “We had to do it the hard way. We had to beat a really, really good team. So that's unusual. It doesn't fall that way a lot of times. So yeah, this was a big, big game.”

As such, the Huskies celebrated after the final buzzer sounded. They put on their championship t-shirts, received the trophy at mid-court and were showered with blue and white confetti.

All the pomp and circumstance caught freshman Sarah Strong off-guard.

“Sarah was happy,” Auriemma said. “She was surprised we got a t-shirt for winning it.”

“I thought it was after — like, at Mohegan (for the conference tournament). That one, not this one,” the freshman admitted postgame.

Yet amid the excitement, UConn nearly left the trophy sitting on the mid-court logo. As the rest of the team jogged into the locker room, Jana El Alfy was alerted and she turned around to go retrieve it.

One championship down. Two to go.

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A familiar regional

In the second NCAA bracket reveal, UConn remained a 2-seed and landed in a regional that’ll feel plenty familiar. The Huskies were paired with USC (1-seed), Duke (3-seed) and Kentucky (4-seed) in the Spokane 3 Regional.

If that held to Selection Sunday (it won’t) and the higher seeds all advanced, UConn would play the same teams in the same games as last year: Duke in the Sweet Sixteen and USC in the Elite Eight.

Despite beating South Carolina by 29 on the road, the Huskies position didn’t change much. They remained a 2-seed and only moved up from the seventh overall seed to sixth. The biggest difference is that they’re now in a Spokane regional after previously landing in Birmingham. UConn ended up on the west coast in each of the last two tournaments, going to Portland last season and Seattle the year before.

Ultimately, the bracket reveals are just a snapshot in time. Thursday’s has already become obsolete after a string of upsets later in the night: Florida State knocked off Notre Dame, Alabama took down LSU, Duke handily beat UNC and Kentucky crushed Tennessee.

In ESPN’s latest bracketology, updated on Friday morning, UConn remains in the same regional with USC but UNC and Oklahoma are the 3- and 4-seeds, respectively. The Huskies would take on Albany in the first round followed by the winner of 7-seed Oklahoma State and 10-seed Indiana.

Elsewhere in the Big East, ESPN projects Creighton to be an 8-seed while Marquette moved from the “next four out” to the “first four out”, opening the possibility of a three-bid Big East.

UConn traveling with security detail

With UConn’s popularity — though perhaps it’s Bueckers’ popularity — at an all-time high, the team has helped three different programs set attendance records: Creighton (11,141), DePaul (8,305) and Butler (9,100).

In Chicago, fans reportedly climbed trees outside Wintrust Arena to just get a glance at Bueckers and the Huskies. Over the weekend, fans gathered near UConn’s team bus after the win over the Bulldogs.

“It really is like one of those Taylor Swift phenomenons,” Auriemma said on his radio show.

The majority of that attention is positive — young girls donning No. 5 UConn jerseys with their hair braided in Bueckers’ distinctive style just want a photo or an autograph from her. Auriemma hopes it’ll leave a mark on opposing programs.

“It’s great for Butler because there's 9,000 people at the game and they haven't gotten 9,000 total the last five years,” he said. “So for them to get a big crowd, maybe a bunch of people come back and become Butler basketball fans and they'll be there next year when we go out there.”

There have been downsides, though. Back in September, a 40-year old man was arrested for stalking and harassing Bueckers. He pled guilty in December and was barred from the state of Connecticut during his three-year probation.

As a result of all of it, the team has been traveling with a security detail.

“This year, we bring a security person with us because the fans just have access to the court,” Auriemma said. “They always know what hotel you're staying at, so they're always waiting for you went outside the hotel… They're waiting for you when you get to the arena, and then you're waiting for you when you come out of the game. This year has been especially crazy.”