Copyright Hartford Courant
STORRS — Opening the 2025-26 season with a ranked neutral-site matchup wouldn’t have been coach Geno Auriemma’s first choice. He couldn’t remember off the top of his head who the UConn women’s basketball team played first in 2024-25, and he prefers it that way. Last season began on an 86-32 rout of Boston University in Hartford, a low-stakes starting point for the team’s 2025 NCAA championship run. No. 20 Louisville will pose a much bigger challenge to begin the year when they face the Huskies in the Armed Forces Classic at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday. “I’d rather kind of ease into it,” Auriemma said with a chuckle after practice Friday. “It’s not like we planned for this. It’s just an opportunity that came up, and you can’t pass it up … It’s not the easiest thing for us, not the easiest thing for them, but we’ll dive into the deep and and see what happens.” Though UConn enters the season as the No. 1 team in the country, the team has a lot of questions to answer when it steps on the floor for its first official game. The Huskies bring back a pair of superstars in redshirt senior Azzi Fudd and sophomore Sarah Strong, but both will carry a new level of expectation without three-time All-American Paige Bueckers to lean on this season. UConn has its deepest bench in years on paper, but the team spent most of preseason trying to quickly develop chemistry with five newcomers joining the roster. Those connections will be put to the test immediately, and Auriemma knows it’s going to look imperfect this early on. “You really don’t know until games actually begin,” Auriemma said. “The only thing that really makes it work is to have games. You have to put them in game situations where they’ve got to figure things out on the fly. We’ve got a couple of combinations that we have out there that look pretty good, but they look pretty good because we’re here in a controlled environment. So I think Tuesday will be a little bit bigger test.” Louisville is something of a mystery heading into the opener with only a single returning starter from last year’s roster. The Cardinals lost three contributors to the transfer portal after a second-round exit from the NCAA Tournament headlined by senior forward Nyla Harris to North Carolina, and they have seven new players including four freshmen to integrate this season. Louisville’s biggest addition was senior forward Laura Ziegler, who was a finalist for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Award last season at St. Joseph’s. Ziegler averaged 17.5 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game with the Hawks, and she is expected to be an instant impact player for the Cardinals as she transitions to the power conference level. Louisville also has an exciting young core after bringing in the No. 6 recruiting class in the country in 2024. Sophomore forward Tajianna Roberts is the team’s lone returning starter, and the former No. 24 prospect was a standout in her freshman campaign averaging 12.8 points, 3.4 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.7 steals. The Cardinals also brought back former No. 19 recruit Imari Berry and No. 23 Mackenly Randolph, who both averaged less than 13 minutes per game last season but have the talent to make a leap in 2025-26 with more opportunity to get on the floor. “It wouldn’t be so bad if they had everybody back and I knew exactly who they were, but they’ve gone through a lot of changes from last year, and that’s always a challenge,” Auriemma said. “Roberts and Berry are really, really good. Last year when we played them a lot of their best players were freshmen, and now those kids are sophomores. So I think it’ll be a great test for our players, for our older guys get back into the swing of things and for our new guys to (understand) hey, this is Connecticut basketball.” Though there’s almost no film for the Huskies to scout Louisville’s new-look roster, Auriemma has an idea of what to expect thanks to his familiarity with coach Jeff Walz’s style after 18 years leading the program. UConn went head to head with Walz’s Cardinals in the Big East from 2007-13, and they were also conference opponents for a season in the American Athletic in 2013-14. They’ve also met twice for the national title, with UConn winning both meetings in blowout fashion, first to complete a perfect season in 2009 and then for the program’s eighth title in 2013. The Huskies have dominated the all-time series, with a 20-3 record all time, and UConn routed Louisville when the teams met last season at Barclays Center in Brooklyn as part of the Women’s Champions Classic. Fudd shined for the Huskies in that matchup with 18 points shooting 4-for-7 from 3-point range in just 18 minutes on the court before exiting the game midway through the third quarter with a knee sprain. Strong was also spectacular against the Cardinals with 21 points, eight rebounds, three assists, a block and a steal, and Shade added 13 points shooting 6-for-9 from the field to lead UConn to an 85-52 victory. Berry was a standout for Louisville in last season’s matchup with a team-high 10 points in 12 minutes of playing time. “You can kind of predict based on what you’ve seen in the past from Jeff and their staff and what their team over the years has been like, and what they like to do,” Auriemma said. “We have a scouting report sitting on my on my desk, and I don’t know how much of it to believe, because it’s all from the exhibition stuff. But other than that, it’s kind of a typical Louisville team in that respect. They’ve got a couple good transfers in. They’re long, their quickness and how they want to play and how aggressive they want to be, I wouldn’t expect anything different.” Dom Amore: After years of waiting, Ayanna Patterson will finally get her chance at UConn How to watch UConn women’s basketball vs. Louisville Site: Alumni Hall at U.S. Naval Academy; Annapolis, Maryland Time/date: 5:30 p.m., Tuesday Series record: UConn leads 20-3 Last meeting: 85-52 UConn, Dec. 7, 2024 at Barclays Center TV: ESPN Streaming: ESPN+
