DENVER – The University of Connecticut women's basketball team is in the Final Four.
Again.
And yet somehow, someway, it's actually kind of surprising.
This is UConn's lucky 13th Final Four appearance, a staggering feat in the history of the NCAA women's tournament.
Yet this year all the attention is on some "big kid from Baylor" (as UConn head coach Geno Auriemma referred to Brittney Griner on Saturday). And even when the spotlight isn't on Baylor and their push for an historic 40-win season (which it rarely isn't), it seems UConn is still overshadowed by the other teams in this Final Four.
Skylar Diggins is a star for Notre Dame, leading her team to back-to-back Final Fours.
The Ogwumike sisters, Nnemkadi and Chiney, boast a huge online following with thousands of followers on Twitter. Not to mention the rabid Stanford fans that follow the sisters' every move.
And UConn, of course, has a National Player of the Year candidate.
Don't they?
They have some player who can score at will and probably has broken every record in women's college basketball.
Of course they do. They simply have to.
That's the assumption at Connecticut. Names like Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore have made history there.
As Auriemma admits, "At Connecticut it's treason if you say you're not going to win a national championship."
Geno found himself committing treason all too often this year.
Back on Nov. 21 UConn beat a then-No. 6 Stanford team, a Stanford team that is appearing in its fifth straight Final Four.
"Early in the season, when we beat a really, really good Stanford team … I said to the team, 'You know what, you guys surprised me.' I thought, 'Wow, this could be really good.' "
The Huskies didn't impress Geno much in practice, but they continued to win. They blew out defending champion Texas A&M and held an 11-point lead at Baylor. Even though they eventually lost in Waco, Geno was happy to see his team compete at such a high level.
But while the rest of the country watched Connecticut carve up their opponents, Geno saw reason for concern.
Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma coaches his team during practice at the Final Four in Denver.
(AP)
"For some reason sometime in January and a long time in February, we lost it. We stopped getting better. We stopped working at it. We stopped listening. We stopped executing."
For Connecticut, a home loss to St. John's on Feb. 18 made the Huskies officially vulnerable.
The media became much more enamored with Baylor's undefeated march through the regular season than with UConn's surprising, and impressive, wins. That was even evident at Saturday's news conference, as at one point Geno Auriemma received so many questions about Baylor that he felt compelled to remind the moderator, "Well, we're not playing Baylor."
Even though it finds itself in the Final Four yet again, Connecticut is, for once, an underdog. The team that holds the all-time record in college basketball for consecutive wins and has seven national championship trophies is somehow being overlooked in this tournament.
Their coach has taken up the underdog moniker and is running with it, mentioning his doubt and seemingly putting questioning his team's toughness at every opportunity.
Surely he's just trying to get his players to play harder by challenging them. Or maybe he's actually doubtful that his team can make it past Notre Dame this time around, a team they've already lost to twice this season.
"When we played Stanford a couple years ago, they're up 20-12. Maya Moore came out in the second half and took over the game. If we're in that situation again, do we have somebody that can do that? I don't know. I don't know."
Connecticut doesn't have that clear go-to player this year. If the game against Notre Dame comes down to the wire, it's not obvious who takes that last shot. On any other team in this year's Final Four, the coach knows exactly who they'll get the ball to in crunch time.
Even Notre Dame's Skylar Diggins says this year's UConn team is different.
"I think sometimes a lot of people get lost in the history of the program and the jersey, and that can intimidate you right away," she says. "I think this team, the past previous games especially, we haven't been intimidated. And no Maya Moore helps that out too."
But despite the lack of a clear leader, UConn keeps hanging around, and they keep winning. For all Geno's doubt and worry and borderline treason, he has his team back in the Final Four.
Tiffany Hayes thinks the lack of a superstar might be exactly what this year's team thrives on.
"I think it's good for us that all of us are able to step up … and we don't just have one person doing everything. There's no superstars on our teams. We're all superstars," she said on Saturday.
Kelly Faris agrees. "It took us a little bit to kind of grasp the concept that we don't have [that] superstar on our team that we can rely on," the junior guard says. "I think we've been kind of used to that the last few years."
If ever there is a year where UConn's strength lies not in its ability to overwhelm the opposing team with superior talent, but with the element of surprise, this is that year.
"On any given night one of us could score 20 if need be," Faris points out.
UConn managed to overcome the lack of a superstar the last time they played Notre Dame, easily winning 63-54 in the Big East tournament. And the Huskies managed to overcome the lack of a superstar all the way through this year's tournament, all the way to yet another Final Four appearance.
So while they're an underdog of sorts, really, they're just an underdog by UConn standards.
"I knew we were doing lots of things we're not used to seeing at Connecticut, but we were winning," the legendary coach told the press on Saturday.
It's a different kind of year for UConn, but ultimately, it might end with a familiar result.
"Once the Big East tournament ended, I thought, 'We've got as good a shot as anybody of winning this thing.' "
And if they do get past Notre Dame and eventually win yet another championship, let's be honest: Will anyone really be that surprised?
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