UConn Basketball

"PHEEEESSAA!!!!!!"

She'd hear the word bellow out of coach Geno Auriemma at a practice, and she'd know she was about to get called out. Again. Another mistake.

And the worst part? She knew he was right.     

She was playing too deferential. Too timid.

Napheesa Collier had a long way to go.

But that didn't mean it didn't kill the now-senior UConn forward to hear it from the team's legendary coach.

Auriemma knew how to press her buttons. How to mine more out of her. He'd dog her about stretching out of her comfort zone around the hoop, developing a mid-range game.

At one practice, he called her selfish when she failed to dive for a loose ball that was rolling out of bounds.

And he'd yell these generalizations.

"Phee, you don't ever get a rebound!"

"Phee, you never stop the ball!"

Collier wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he got under her skin, though. She burned to prove him wrong.

Gabby Williams, who was a year ahead of Collier at UConn, remembers how rough it was. "I've watched Phee get pushed to the point where she just didn't think it was possible to go any harder," says Williams, who's now on the WNBA's Chicago Sky. "They were asking her to do things that she just didn't think she was capable of doing."

Like the 11-man drill, a continuous 3-on-2 full-court exercise that is one of the toughest in practice. Players are running faster than they can breathe. There is no stopping. Only passing and cutting and scoring.

Williams pulled Collier aside at one point, telling her: "It's gonna be hard. You're gonna be tired no matter what. It's how you approach it, mentally."

"It's not for everyone," Williams says now. "But everyone doesn't have 11 national championships."

And Collier wanted one of her own.

So she didn't break.

The freshman who had so far to go turned herself into one of the top scorers and rebounders in the program's history—and has it two wins away from a 12th national championship.

She also turned herself into a player who will hear her name announced near the top of the WNBA draft on April 10 and has earned praise from some of the sport's top stars.

"I love the fact that she can put the ball on the floor and that she can stretch the floor," two-time WNBA MVP Candace Parker tells B/R. "She plays bigger than she is. That's the type of game coming into the WNBA that will translate, because that's where the WNBA is now. It's positionless.

"Obviously, I'm in no way a Connecticut fan, but I'm a Phee fan because I know how much work she puts in."

To come this far, Collier had to.

"It was about believing in myself..." Collier says. "It was about trusting myself and knowing that I know how to play, I'm here for a reason, and I need to start proving that to myself."

---

As a young girl, Collier used to fall down often. On sidewalks, on basketball courts. She was so tall and stretchy, she'd trip on her toes all of a sudden and stumble to the ground, her long legs tangled underneath her.

"Oh, there's that line monster!" her mother, Sarah, would joke. "The line monster got you again!"

And lines weren't the only thing coming for Collier.

She was constantly the subject of hard fouls from opposing players. She'd leave games with fingernail marks trailing up and down her arms. She'd head-fake and bang her way to the basket, and someone would snatch the scrunchie off her ponytail.

That is, when teams finally let her play. Sarah and Napheesa's father, Gamal, couldn't find a team that would give third-grade Napheesa a chance in Jefferson City, Missouri. "We already have too many girls," coaches would say. "We just don't have any room."

Not one spot? Not even for a girl who already had a natural instinct for where the ball was and where it would be? Nope. But when a team finally did give her a jersey, she proved to be a force. She just flew. Grabbing rebounds, running the floor. "She was blocking shots, getting deflections, just everywhere," says Kay Foster, her former youth coach with the Missouri Lady Warriors. "You can't teach that."

Not that basketball was everything to her. Mom and Dad made sure of that. "We didn't want our kids to think that a sport defined them," Sarah says. So before games, you could find Napheesa curled up in a corner with a mystery novel from her favorite author, Ruth Ware.

But when the game started, she gave everything. "She never needed to talk about it," says Dan Rolfes, her high school coach at Incarnate Word Academy in St. Louis. "She just led by example."

Once, her coach on the Missouri Phenom club team, Reggie Middlebrook, told her that scouts were coming to see her for a two-day showcase in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but that she only needed to play one of the days. He didn't want her to get injured.

"Well, I want to play both days," Collier told him.

Middlebrook allowed it but under one condition: no diving for loose balls. Two minutes into the first game she played in the showcase, an errant pass flew, and Collier dove for it. She had to. "What did we just talk about?!" Middlebrook screamed. Gamal laughed and yelled out from the stands: "She doesn't know how to turn that switch off! You're gonna have to take her out of the game if you don't want her doing that!" Middlebrook subbed her out.

"I've had kids that worked hard," Middlebrook says. "But nobody like Pheesa.'"

Her parents taught her that. Boasting was forbidden. Probably the closest she has come to talking smack was heading into sixth grade, playing against a team of soon-to-be high schoolers. Collier dove for a loose ball with another girl. The girl yelled a few curse words at her, finishing with: "Get off me!"

Little Collier got back up, put her hand on her hip and looked over her shoulder at the girl, giving her a little hip shake: "Make me!"

It was one of the proudest moments of her young life.

Other than that, she stayed even-keeled. She's always been soft-spoken but direct. Calm. It's a demeanor that has often been misunderstood, labeled not assertive enough. Not fierce enough.

"Mom, my teammates don't get me," she'd say as a young girl. "They just don't get me. They don't know I'm funny!"

And she was kind. In high school, she once turned down a wide-open layup to kick the ball out to a teammate at the three-point line because the teammate was on the cusp of the 1,000-point mark. "If someone on the other team fell," says her brother, Kai, "she tried to pick them up."

Gamal started telling Napheesa when she was about 15 that every time she steps on the floor, she makes an impression. People will form opinions about her by the way she plays and the way she carries herself upon first meeting her.

"So, what do you want your story to be?" he said. 

"My story?"

"You write your story, your legacy. So, how do you want it to be?"

Collier wasn't sure. Not yet.

---

Collier was deferring. Overpassing, overthinking. She was a freshman at UConn, exhausted from conditioning, from weights, having never lifted before. She was barely able to hobble up the steep steps around campus after practice.

Every day, she was just trying to survive.

Then there was Breanna Stewart, a senior who never seemed to tire. She was so dominant, so poised, she already looked like a WNBA MVP. So during the first few weeks of practice, Collier fed Stewart the ball on most occasions, instinctively looking to dish before even squaring up and taking a peek at the rim to see if there was an opportunity for herself.

Sometimes she'd forget the plays, concerned with where she needed to be instead of just being. The Huskies offense isn't designed for specific plans. It's an outline that breeds creativity and requires intelligence. Make the right reads and you'll succeed. But Collier came in more structural than spontaneous. In high school, most plays on her team were diagrammed.

"The talent was there," says Marisa Moseley, a former Huskies assistant coach who is now the head coach at Boston University. "There was never a time when she wasn't trying to beat her opponent down the floor and get a bucket."

"She's got that killer instinct in her," says former teammate Azura Stevens, who's now with the WNBA's Dallas Wings.

But Collier's confidence dropped. Sometimes she didn't feel like she belonged. She wanted to be coached, though. Always has. As a second-grader, she came home from soccer practice one day, frustrated: "Mom, Coach kept telling everybody, 'Good job, good job,'" she said. "But nobody was doing a good job!"

Just like Collier knew she was not doing a good job early on at UConn.

And she knew she'd hear about it. She didn't think of transferring. Not when her parents had one rule in their household: that Napheesa and her siblings, Kai and Wanza, weren't allowed to say It's not fair or It's not my fault.

Collier, like any first-year player, was trying to fit in. To earn her place. To be respectful. "She just thought, I'm here to be a teammate—not understanding that, you know, you gotta cut everybody's throat," Gamal says.

Auriemma made sure she learned the lesson, challenging her to play better defense, be more physical, get in better shape.

It was, in Gamal's view, "brutal."

---

After that freshman year, Collier was sure of one thing: "I never wanted to feel like this again."

No more second-guessing. Collier was going to fight for a starting spot. "She played with a ton of heart," says Kia Nurse, her former roommate, who's now with the WNBA’s New York Liberty.

Collier trained twice a day that summer with Alex Bazzell, who also trains Parker and Atlanta Hawks rookie star Trae Young. The first sessions began at 6 a.m. Stepping outside of the paint, she developed a soft touch. Over and over, she labored on her footwork.

Collier would compete against three men's college players in a grueling drill where one would throw the ball off the glass and she would battle the other two for the rebound. Then the two players would smother her and she'd have to beat them to half court. Then it was the third player's turn to guard her one-on-one down on the other end of the floor. She'd have to score 10 times total. Up and down the floor, she'd have to push through exhaustion while finding ways to change her pace and handle the ball under pressure.

She hated it, but she didn't stop. 

"Her level of consistency is something I haven't seen," Bazzell says. "She's never had a bad workout. She never just goes through the motions. I've never seen that from anyone."

Collier came into her sophomore season much improved, but again, the coaching staff challenged her. The Huskies were doing a rebounding drill when Collier failed to box out a male practice player. "That's why you aren't going to play this year. That's why you'll never play," Collier remembers Auriemma saying to her.

OK, OK. I'm going to show you, she thought. The male practice player didn't get another board over her for the rest of practice. Or for the next few practices.

Then, one day, Collier went into Auriemma's office. He told her she was a good player. Coach thinks I'm good? Me?

"But," Auriemma said, "if you do these things, you could be a great player."

He told her she needed to continue to expand her game to mid-range and three-point range and improve her ball-handling.

After that, she began to trust her instincts. And she shined, leading the team in scoring (20.4 points per game) and rebounding (9.1 per game) as a sophomore while shooting a blistering 67.8 percent. She was named a first-team All-American, but for the first time in five seasons, UConn didn't win a national championship. The Huskies lost to Mississippi State in the Final Four.

Collier continued to be asked about her demeanor all the while. Why are you so quiet? Why are you so calm? People didn't see her for what she is: goofy and outgoing, always playing pranks, like hiding behind basketballs and then screaming to scare her UConn teammates. Some spectators said she didn't have emotions, didn't have personality.

They still say those things. Every comment hurts. It's that familiar, painful feeling she felt as a young girl of not being understood.

"That makes me so mad," Collier says. She'd feel pulled to defend herself, to explain that it makes no sense for her to show her opponent she's frustrated by losing her composure, or to celebrate when she makes a key basket, either.

"You don't run around and boast when you pay a bill or make a deadline," Gamal would tell her as a girl. "That's just what you're supposed to do."

It didn't help that her stats dipped a bit last season as a junior (16.1 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, 58.3 percent shooting), though she remained a vocal leader of the team. She was playing a new position on the perimeter, something she had never done before, and felt unsure of herself.

And the way the season ended definitely didn't help.

---

The thoughts still sometimes flood her mind when she thinks of The Shot—the game-winning jumper Arike Ogunbowale hit over her last March to lift Notre Dame past UConn in the Final Four.

If only I had counted down the shot clock. If only I had gotten closer. Just a little bit closer. If only I wasn't so wary of a drive. Of an easy layup. Of failing to close out.  If only... If only... If only...

In that moment, Collier felt what anyone who has ever loved basketball has felt: the need to have a do-over, to turn back time. But she couldn't.

She could only try to move past it.

And skate. With her entire team.

A week after the loss, the Huskies went to Ron-A-Roll, a roller-skating rink about 20 minutes from campus. She had a choice: She could continue to wallow, to blame herself, to mourn her team falling short for the second straight season, or she could whirl past all of it. At least for a few hours.

Collier laced up the white laces of her tan skates and began to pump her arms, her legs. Faster. Around and around, she zipped across the rink, settling into a groove. A smile broke through. More laps. Then laughs. Everyone kept falling down. Twice. Three times. Five times. Collier was one of the more graceful players, but she too wiped out.

Each time, players picked each other up, laughing harder. They didn't have to think about what critics were saying: UConn's lost it. They're just not the same. Is this an end of an era?

No. Collier wouldn't allow that to happen. Not after all she's been through.

She showed up her senior season back to All-American form, averaging 21.2 points and 10.8 rebounds. You can see why the WNBA is so excited about her. She has become the most consistent player in women's college basketball. She blocks shots and defends players much taller than her 6'2" frame. Her fadeaway is automatic. And she can face up or step out, too.

"She does a little bit of everything and does it every day, every game, every time we're on the floor," says Chris Dailey, UConn's associate head coach.

Still, as if Collier needed the extra motivation, she was not named a finalist for the Naismith Trophy as a senior—and UConn received a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament despite a 31-2 regular season that included a win over Notre Dame, which did receive a No. 1.

"That lit a fire within us. We were so confused and shocked by the No. 2 seed, not really understanding where it came from," Collier says. "I think we do still definitely feel disrespected. So, I mean, watch out, I guess."

She's using the tournament to right all wrongs, averaging 21.8 points and 13.3 rebounds per game and helping the Huskies earn a remarkable 12th straight trip to the Final Four after an 80-73 win over top-seeded Louisville on Sunday.

In the waning seconds of the Louisville win, she broke from her normally reserved on-court demeanor, flashing a smile as she jogged back to UConn's huddle. She couldn't help it. The basketball gods had just given her a friendly roll on two crucial free throws.

Dailey wasn't having it, though, shouting, "The game's not over!"

Collier quickly wiped the smile off her face, but her mother, Sarah, knew the jubilance wasn't all the way gone. "She was still smiling on the inside," Sarah says.

This Collier, the one who knows who she is and what she can do, isn't the one who showed up in Storrs four years ago. 

So when she is asked yet again why she is the way she is, by reporters leading up to the Final Four, she takes a deep breath. "I can't control what people think about me or how they see me," Collier says.

Then she remembers why she's here.

"No matter what people say, I definitely wouldn't change how I play," Collier says. "I didn't come here to get individual awards. I came here to win championships."

That's what she wants her story to be.

            

Mirin Fader is a writer-at-large for B/R Mag. She's written for the Orange County Register, espnW.com, SI.com and Slam. Her work has been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, the Football Writers Association of America and the Los Angeles Press Club. Follow her on Twitter: @MirinFader.

Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Ray Allen's No. 34 jersey number was retired by UConn on Sunday prior to the Huskies' home game versus South Florida:

No. 34, retired in perpetuity. pic.twitter.com/IKy6d60Rno

— CBS Sports Network (@CBSSportsNet) March 3, 2019

Allen is just the second Husky to have their jersey number retired. Rebecca Lobo's No. 50 was first in a ceremony Saturday.

The 18-year pro is an NBA legend perhaps best known for his three-pointer in the 2013 NBA Finals and his role as Jesus Shuttlesworth in the movie He Got Game.

He is a 10-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA team member who averaged 18.9 points on 45.2 percent shooting. Allen also hit 40 percent of his three-pointers over a career that was spent with the Milwaukee Bucks, Seattle SuperSonics, Boston Celtics and Miami Heat.

The two-time NBA champion won titles with the 2007-08 Celtics and 2012-13 Heat.

Allen played at UConn from 1993-96, posting 19.0 points per game on 48.7 percent shooting and 44.8 percent from three-point range. He was named the Big East Player of the Year for the 1995-96 Huskies, who went 32-3 and won the regular-season and conference tournament championships.

He left school after his junior year and was drafted fifth overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves, who traded him and Andrew Lang to the Milwaukee Bucks for the rights to Stephon Marbury. 

The University of Connecticut men's basketball team has issued seven self-imposed penalties following the NCAA investigation into alleged violations under former head coach Kevin Ollie.

Per an official announcement from the school (h/t David Borges of the New Haven Register), the penalties range from paying the NCAA a $5,000 fine to a one-week ban on unofficial visits and recruiting communications during the 2018-19 academic year:

#UConn announces self-imposed penalties pic.twitter.com/gmGOGvwehN

— David Borges (@DaveBorges) January 18, 2019

The NCAA announced findings from its investigation last September. Ollie was hit with multiple violations, including an unethical conduct charge. 

Per ESPN.com's Myron Medcalf, Ollie's unethical conduct charge stemmed from allegedly providing false or misleading information regarding phone calls between Ray Allen, Rudy Gay and a recruit. 

Ollie also was charged with allegedly providing unfair recruiting benefits, exceeding limits on practice times, failing to promote an atmosphere of compliance and failing to monitor players' outside workouts. 

Since the school wasn't found guilty of any violations during the investigation, it could avoid any sanctions from the NCAA after self-imposing its own Friday. 

UConn fired Ollie for cause in March, meaning it didn't have to pay the $10 million remaining on his contract. He filed a lawsuit against the school last month, claiming his firing was racially motivated. 

Dan Hurley took over for Ollie as head coach of the Huskies. He's 10-8 in his first season with the program.  

Former UConn Huskies head basketball coach Kevin Ollie has filed a complaint in federal court, alleging that UConn "illegally attempted to stop him from filing a racial discrimination claim stemming from his firing in March," per Joel Anderson of ESPN.com. 

He also noted in his complaint that his predecessor, Jim Calhoun, "managed to keep his job despite committing NCAA violations more serious than those Ollie was accused of and that were used to justify his firing last spring."

Calhoun was hit with NCAA violations in 2011, and as a part of his punishment, he was suspended for three Big East games in 2011-12. The school was also levied with scholarship reductions for three years, among other penalties, though Calhoun wasn't fired from his post and retired in 2012.

Ollie was fired with cause in March, and UConn athletic director David Benedict accused the head coach of a "failure to promote compliance, failure to timely report instances of non-compliance, intentional participation in impermissible on-campus activity with a prospective student-athlete and a representative of the University's athletic interests for recruiting purposes," per Anderson.

By firing him with cause, UConn did not owe him the $10 million remaining on his contract, money that Ollie is attempting to recoup.

The NCAA also found in its own investigation of Ollie that he committed recruiting violations and hit him with an unethical conduct charge in September. The most serious charge alleged that Ollie "provided false or misleading information about video calls to a recruit from two former UConn stars, Hall of Famer Ray Allen and San Antonio Spurs guard Rudy Gay," per the Associated Press (h/t USA Today).

Many of the NCAA's findings aligned with UConn's internal investigation of Ollie. The former head coach has disputed the denial of the $10 million and said he had planned to file a racial discrimination claim before UConn ended the arbitration process with Ollie and determined it didn't owe him the remaining money on his contract.

Ollie's current claim, then, is an "emergency injunctive relief" that grants him the right to file a discrimination claim and resume arbitration with the university. 

Former Connecticut Huskies head men's basketball coach Kevin Ollie is reportedly facing a possible show-cause penalty from the NCAA for alleged unethical conduct.

On Friday, Myron Medcalf of ESPN.com reported the NCAA sent a notice of allegations to UConn and Ollie, and it featured multiple violations, including a Level I unethical conduct charge. 

He was also charged with providing unfair recruiting benefits, failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance, exceeding limits on practice times and failure to monitor his players' workouts outside the program.

Ollie took over at UConn following the retirement of Jim Calhoun in September 2012.

The Texas native played college basketball for the Huskies and returned to the program in 2010 as an assistant coach following his retirement from the NBA.

During his first season in charge, he inherited a team that was ineligible for postseason play because of low academic progress rates. He still enjoyed immediate success, leading UConn to a 20-10 record in 2012-13 and following that with a 32-8 mark the next season en route to a national championship.

Connecticut never reached those heights again during his tenure, though. It didn't advance beyond the second round of the NCAA tournament in his final four seasons, and he was fired with cause in March because of the NCAA investigation.

The notice of allegations claims Ollie provided "false or misleading information" about contact between NBA stars Ray Allen and Rudy Gay, both UConn alums, and a top recruit as well as "falsely denied he had knowledge" of player workouts with his friend Derek Hamilton, a professional trainer, per Medcalf.

His attorney, Jacques Parenteau, provided a statement to ESPN.com about the claims:

"It is not a surprise that the Notice of Allegations mimics the University of Connecticut's position in the arbitration as there is every reason to believe that the NCAA would support its member. However, an allegation is not proof of anything, it's just an allegation. When the time comes to prove what actually happened, we will show that Coach Ollie did nothing to justify UConn's failure to pay him the money that is due him by contract."

Ollie has 90 days to respond to the notice before the NCAA's Committee on Infractions makes a decision based on the probe.

Any penalties he receives can stay in effect if he is hired by another program, and his new school would need to meet with a committee every six months to prove it is in compliance with NCAA rules.      

Former Connecticut men's basketball coach Kevin Ollie could file a lawsuit against the school as part of his desire to receive the money he believes he is owed after being fired in March. 

Per ESPN.com's Myron Medcalf, Ollie sent a letter to Connecticut president Susan Herbst demanding a retraction from the university after releasing transcripts related to an NCAA investigation to media outlets and could sue for defamation and invasion of privacy. 

The NCAA notified Connecticut of an investigation into the men's basketball program in January.

Per Dom Amore of the Hartford Courant, a total of 1,355 pages of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that NCAA infractions included facilitating a phone call to a recruit from Ray Allen and have players workout with an outside trainer on campus and in Atlanta. 

Medcalf noted there was also a secondhand claim from Glen Miller, a Huskies associate head coach from 2010-17, that Ollie paid a former recruit's mother $30,000 to receive a commitment from her son. 

When UConn fired Ollie on March 10, the school announced it was for "just cause," allowing them to avoid paying him the $10 million left on his contract. 

The University of Connecticut said it fired Kevin Ollie as a result of illegal practices committed by the head coach, per Dom Amore and Dave Altimari of the Hartford Courant.

Among the NCAA violations allegedly committed, Ollie is said to have facilitated a phone call between a recruit and former UConn star Ray Allen as well as getting a personal friend, Derrek Hamilton, to train his players off-campus in 2015-16.

These alleged transgressions could prevent the school from paying the coach the remaining $10 million owed on his contract.

The school said that several players were given food, transportation and housing after traveling to Atlanta to work with Hamilton. The trainer also allegedly received complimentary tickets to games.

Athletic director David Benedict, who fired Ollie in March while claiming "just cause," wrote a letter describing the violations. There was also concern about the lack of reporting from Ollie or his assistants.

"Every violation I am raising was discovered from sources other than you or your staff," Benedict said.

Ollie took over for longtime coach Jim Calhoun in 2012 and found immediate success, leading the team to a national championship in his second season behind Shabazz Napier.

The Huskies also reached the NCAA tournament in 2015-16 after winning the AAC tournament.

The team struggled from there with back-to-back losing seasons. Connecticut went 30-35 in Ollie's final two seasons before he was fired.

His contract ran through 2021, and he will receive the money owed if the school can't prove just cause. The case will go to arbitration following hearings with school officials.

Former UConn head men's basketball coach Kevin Ollie and his lawyers said in a letter to the university that his constitutional rights were violated when he was fired for cause.

The letter said Ollie was never given the opportunity to refute the cause for his termination, which was guaranteed in his contract. It also said he was prevented from receiving the $10 million termination payout he would have received if he were fired without cause.

Myron Medcalf of ESPN.com shared an excerpt from the letter:

"From our review of the facts and circumstances relating to Coach Ollie's employment status, it is apparent that the University of Connecticut has already violated [Coach Ollie's] rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by subverting Coach Ollie's opportunity to respond to charges and evidence in a meaningful way in advance of the decision to terminate his employment.

"The public record, action taken, and authorized communications by representatives of the University of Connecticut, demonstrate that the decision to terminate Coach Ollie has already been made and therefore the University of Connecticut has effectively negated Coach Ollie's property right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Ollie, 45, was fired March 10 with cause, though the university has not publicly stated the basis for that distinction. The program is being investigated by the NCAA for potential recruiting violations, which may be connected to Ollie's dismissal.

Ollie was replaced by former Rhode Island head coach Dan Hurley, who was hired in late March.

Per Medcalf, Ollie had the right to a termination letter outlining the cause for termination as a part of the collective bargaining agreement agreed upon by UConn's branch of the American Association of University Professors. He also had a right to a hearing.

That hearing took place last week with athletic director David Benedict, who maintained the school's decision to fire him with cause. Ollie will next have a hearing with UConn president Susan Herbst, and if she agrees with the decision to fire him, he can choose to bring aboard an arbitrator to hear his case, according to Medcalf.

If the arbiter upholds his firing with cause, Ollie's last recourse is a lawsuit. Given that his letter accuses the school of a violation of the 14th Amendment, which protects due process, it would appear Ollie and his legal team are preparing for that option.

Ollie went 127-79 during his six seasons for the Huskies, leading the team to two NCAA tournaments and the 2013-14 national title.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The world may have been shocked, but Notre Dame knew.

The Fighting Irish knew before they took a 13-point lead near the end of the first quarter over a team that had yet to trail in the 2018 NCAA women's basketball tournament.

"They're deservingly favored—they win every game," junior Notre Dame guard Marina Mabrey told Bleacher Report before Friday's Final Four matchup. All questions before the team's Thursday practice appeared to center on how on earth the Fighting Irish were going to beat the undefeated UConn Huskies, a team so good it inspires concern-trolling that its excellence is a bad thing. "But we don't have anything to lose, so we should be the looser team here.

"We're not somebody you want to play in the Final Four."

EPIC. pic.twitter.com/ssRn2yqhJp

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) March 31, 2018

This isn't the first time this season Notre Dame had a chance to upset college basketball's Goliath. Notre Dame looked prepared to tarnish UConn's undefeated record in December after taking an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter, yet wound up losing by nine.

"We can't have mental lapses," Mabrey continued. "We went into the fourth quarter up 11, and we had a huge mental lapse. We just gotta stay focused on the task at hand—break it up into 10-minute spans. This 10 minutes is ours, then this 10, and this 10, and this 10. My favorite team to play is UConn."

"They have such a dominant program. You can't really argue with that," junior forward Maureen Butler told B/R. "If there is attention being brought to women's basketball, I'm happy for that, period."

"What they've done, first and foremost, you just have to respect it," said graduate transfer guard Lili Thompson. "When any team is succeeding and playing well, it's good for all of us. I feel like we had a really good showing against them, but it was really early in the season for us. Since then, we've gone through a lot with injuries, but we've also grown a lot as a team."

Notre Dame went into Friday's game with seven healthy players. On the bench were four—four—players recovering from ACL tears, easily identified by the long, dark scars on their knees. Yet, they still seemed to know what was coming. They knew long before they reclaimed the lead four separate times in regulation against what is widely known as the best program in women's college basketball.

"We've proven again and again that we can overcome so much, whether that's injuries or being down," Butler said Thursday before practice while Thompson studied for a finance exam in the next locker. She cited a January game against Tennessee that the Irish won by 14 after being down by as much as 23. "We have the grit—the mentality—to come back and to find our win."

"We got a little bit disrespected with people saying, 'Oh, they lost so many players,'" Mabrey added. "They thought we were going to get worn down and not be able to make it this far, but here we are—like it or not. We're here, and we're ready to get a championship."

Notre Dame knew things were different the day before the game, as the overwhelming mood in the locker room was chippy and confident. "We can score with anybody in the country," said Thompson. "We're playing some of our best basketball right now, so that's definitely a good feeling to have going into the game," Butler added.

The Fighting Irish knew things were different before UConn found a way to score five points in 21 seconds to send the game to overtime, all while Kobe Bryant watched from the stands wearing a Huskies hat.

.@kobebryant knows 😏 #UConnNation pic.twitter.com/muIMFwbuyP

— UConn (@UConn) March 31, 2018

And yes, they knew before Arike Ogunbowale, the 5'8" junior guard, pulled up from just inside the three-point line with two seconds left in overtime—after missing two free throws that would have given Notre Dame a near-insurmountable five-point lead, allowing the Huskies to hit a game-tying three-pointer with 29 seconds left. They knew, in spite of the impressive odds stacked against them, that they were going to beat UConn.

After the game, Thompson still couldn't talk about The Shot, Redux without letting out a scream of joy. “We're all just on the bench, watching in slow motion," she said. "But that's Rico, right? That's her shot. That's the moment that she's been playing for."

Jackie Young, a sophomore guard who ended the game with 32 points and 11 rebounds—"At the beginning of the game, they kept leaving me open," she said, still a little confused—agreed. "I was under the basket. I watched it the whole way in," Young told Bleacher Report. "We knew it was going to go in. They had a good chance at the end but…."

As players relived the game's final moments, freshman forward Danielle Patterson gleefully listed the media members who were going to be "butthurt" by the upset. Someone told her she was going to become a meme. "Yeah, a winning meme," she replied, laughing. "Everyone talked about how many injuries we had all season, how we had four ACL tears, how you need ACL to spell miracle—but it wasn't a miracle. It was hard work. If we didn't have all this ACL stuff, we wouldn't be here, so we wouldn't change it for the world."

Before the game, Ogunbowale had just beaten Mabrey to 10,000 Instagram followers. "If we beat UConn, you'll definitely get to 10K," the game-winning shot-maker told her teammate at the time. After the win, Mabrey checked her Instagram, and it turned out her teammate's prediction was as accurate as her jumper—she'd cracked five digits. But her primary focus, as it was before the team upset UConn, was the next game.

"We just want to win a national championship," said Mabrey. "Hats off to UConn. They're a great team—but we're better."

This is March, which means brackets, buzzer-beaters and breathless pontificating on how the consistent success of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team is actually bad for the sport. It’s not a new conversation: UConn won its first title in 1995, another one in 2000, then three in a row from 2002 to 2004, and six more since. Since the Huskies became briefly unstoppable in the early aughts, people have offered the same take year after year, lamenting how Geno Auriemma and his team are ruining women’s college basketball with their overwhelming edge in talent, win streaks and large margins of victory.

It appears to make no difference that the argument is both unoriginal and unsupported by any quantifiable metric. It persists, requiring rebuttals like this one to explain again and again how the high bar set by many generations of UConn teams has fueled the growth of women’s basketball and, subsequently, the growth of competitiveness therein.

If this annual dialogue has taught us anything, it’s that the people who insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that UConn is “bad for women’s basketball” are the ones actually hurting the sport—not the Huskies’ exceptional athletes and coaching staff. What is presented as concern for the welfare of women’s basketball is, in practice, an excuse for ignoring the sport altogether. The trope only endures because of deep-rooted double standards for female athletes and mainstream sports media’s unwillingness to challenge them in any substantive way.

“It's a silly argument to say that excellence or greatness is a bad thing,” says Joe Haigh, coach of the St. Francis (Pa.) women’s basketball team, whose loss by 88 points to UConn in the first round of this year’s NCAA tournament ignited the latest round of concern-trolling. “I would be surprised if anybody who said how bad it was for the game actually watched the game. I feel bad that Geno and UConn have to reply back to those people—it's not fair to them; they didn't do anything wrong. They're great, they played hard, they competed, and so did we.”

Haigh, in his sixth year as St. Francis' head coach, says his program is growing, thanks to the team’s success (it went 24-10 in 2017-18) and players like junior Jessica Kovatch, currently the No. 2 scorer in the country with an average of 24.4 PPG. “Our attendance is up locally, and we're getting a ton of support, even though around here they always say they'd never go watch ‘girl's basketball,’” he adds, chuckling. The team is hoping to replicate Mississippi State’s story: lose big to UConn (in MSU’s case, by 60 points in the 2016 tournament) and then take down the Huskies the following year in dramatic fashion.

“My main argument against this narrative is Mississippi State,” says Rebecca Lobo, one of ESPN’s lead women’s tournament analysts, a Hall of Famer and a UConn alum who led the team to its first title back in 1995. “[Mississippi State point guard] Morgan William became a household name not just because she hit a game-winning shot, but because she hit a game-winning shot to beat UConn.” Connecticut’s dominance made the underdog’s ultimate triumph that much more captivating—a narrative that’s common in coverage of men’s dynasties.

Nevertheless, most of the UConn complaints begin similarly: “All sports dynasties are boring and bad—close games are more exciting,” a caveat designed to anticipate allegations of sexism. There have been occasional arguments that Alabama football, the New England Patriots and Golden State Warriors, among others, are doing a disservice to their respective sports by diminishing competitiveness and making outcomes more predictable. The numbers, though, rarely support those arguments, for reasons that are fairly self-evident: How many kids today want to grow up to be Steph Curry? Why do so many Warriors away games draw impressive numbers of fans of both teams eager to see Golden State play?

“Fans—love or hate the particular team in question—can't get enough when it comes to dynasties,” says Noah Cohan, a lecturer in American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in fandom and American sports. "Saying UConn is bad for women's basketball is like saying the 1920s and 1930s Yankees were bad for baseball, or that the 1960s and 1970s UCLA Bruins were bad for men's college basketball. It's just nonsensical when you think about what most fans are looking for out of sports: competitive excellence and familiar stories."

The Bruins are one of the most frequently cited examples in discussions about how UConn’s excellence is a net positive for women’s basketball and logical part of its evolution. “Women's basketball is pretty much a function of Title IX—so, the ‘70s—whereas men's college basketball started about 50 years earlier,” says Joel Maxcy, a sports economist at Drexel University specializing in labor and antitrust issues. “If you go back 50 years, you've got the UCLA dynasty in men's basketball, and the UConn dynasty is somewhat comparable to that.”

Compared to men’s basketball, women’s basketball is still in its adolescence. As more and more girls play, there will be more competition—as there is in this year’s tournament, where a slate of formidable teams (including two No. 11 seeds) have advanced to the Sweet 16. In the meantime, the best high school players will continue to gravitate to the best programs—like UConn, or UCLA in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Assuming the sport continues to grow, it will eventually reach the same kind of parity (for the most part, a few dominant programs that take turns winning the title) that exists on the men’s side—which the people who assert that UConn is hurting the women’s game believe is so integral to attracting fans.

But there is, according to the experts B/R spoke with, some distinction between what people say they want in a sporting event and what actually gets them to tune in or show up. “People say they'd rather see a close game than a blowout, but then there's always this intrigue with teams that are super-good,” Maxcy says. The idea that total parity is the most desirable state for any field of sports competition is promoted heavily by teams and leagues, not because there’s any evidence that fans actually prefer it, but because it’s a great way to cut costs.

“Management and ownership justify almost everything they do to curtail salaries—salary caps, the draft—by saying, ‘We need to maintain competitive balance or people won't be interested,’” adds Maxcy. That myth has percolated down to fans, who now see those measures—as well as the NCAA’s carefully guarded amateurism—as necessary to ensure the sports they follow remain entertaining. Yet, for example, the College Football Playoff National Championship delivered its second-highest ratings on ESPN this year, as Alabama took home its...17th national title.

“Not only are men’s sports dynasties celebrated generally, but when they play other teams, the sports media frames that as a David and Goliath story,” says Cheryl Cooky, an associate professor of American studies at Purdue University and co-author of No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change. “Even though the outcome might be predictable, there's an exciting frame that's placed upon that game. Can someone beat Duke or Alabama or the Golden State Warriors?”

In men’s sports, a team’s dynasty status is usually an asset, not a liability—and the rare critique (or more apt, clickbait thinkpiece) is drowned out by the flood of positive coverage. In women’s college basketball, a half-baked, redundant UConn take might be the only coverage of the tournament on an entire site or channel. “If these ‘UConn is bad for basketball’ opinions were part of a scenario where we were getting all this information about and coverage of the women's tournament, then they wouldn't be egregious,” Cooky continues. “But instead, there’s a total saturation of men's March Madness media coverage and information—and then for the women, you just get that one thing.”

Perversely, that reality is further proof of UConn’s importance to the women’s game. “UConn will get covered places that don't cover any other women's basketball,” says Lobo. “If you turn on SportsCenter, or any other mainstream sports show, we'll have a highlight from UConn, and that might be it. If UConn weren't there, that doesn't mean that suddenly that time is going to be spent on highlights of other teams. It just means there's going to be no women's sports content.”

Instead of reporting, the vast majority of national women’s college basketball coverage and discussion is based on generalizing individual opinions: “I find women’s basketball boring and uncompetitive” becomes “Women’s basketball is boring and uncompetitive” mostly because there’s so little incentive for people talking about it to do research. Who’s going to fact-check them? “When people say women's basketball isn't interesting, they're just saying they don't find it interesting—and if they're listening to the dominant cultural narrative about it, why would they?” says Nicole LaVoi, co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “They're being told that it's boring.”

“Mike Golic is talking about it on the radio, or that guy is writing about it in USA Today—and none of them even bothered to talk to me to see what we were thinking,” says Haigh of the torrent of national coverage about the St. Francis-UConn game. “They didn't even care enough to do a little research on the thing. They had the story they wanted to tell and didn't bother to check any other option out.”  

Lobo has been confronted with baseless criticism of UConn and women’s basketball for her entire adult life, and for her, it’s fine if people aren’t interested. “It’s two different arguments: If someone says, ‘I find women's basketball boring,’ OK—watch whatever you want to watch,” she says. “But to say it's bad, or bad for the game, I think the only response can be, ‘What are the facts that back up your argument?’ Because I can tell you a bunch of reasons why UConn winning has not been bad for the game. Can you imagine if last year at the Super Bowl, somebody had said to Bill Belichick, ‘Has your success been bad for football?’”

The sexism of “UConn is bad for women’s basketball” goes much deeper than the fact that the claim is inaccurate. One of the reasons the team repeatedly inspires this same conversation is it continues to buck the cliche that women are bad at sports. “These articles are indicative of the cultural discomfort that we have with women's physical dominance,” says Cooky. “When young girls and women read pieces that suggest their dominance might be detrimental to the game itself, that reinforces a larger cultural narrative that women should never be dominant,” LaVoi adds. Saying UConn is too successful also has the potential to discourage girls and women from pursuing sports at all—if being the best still isn’t good enough, why bother?

On the flip side, alleging a lack of competitiveness is an easy way to write off women’s basketball altogether. Haigh sees the logical extension of the “UConn is bad for women’s basketball” take as an existential criticism of the sport. “One of the things that’s not said explicitly is, ‘If it’s not going to be competitive, why play that first-round game? Why even have the tournament?’” he says. “The whole attitude is basically telling women’s basketball teams, ‘Go away.’ But no one says that if you’re not Alabama, you just shouldn’t have a football team.”

Even with the national media’s insidious ambivalence toward women’s basketball, there are some bright spots. “Despite the fact that it's rarely covered in sports media—and when it is, it's these damaging narratives—people are still interested in women’s basketball,” says LaVoi. “It should tell you something about how strong the sport is when ratings and attendance rise in spite of these kinds of pieces.”

“‘UConn is bad for the game’ is an argument that's made once a year, in the first or second round of the tournament, almost exclusively by people who don't cover or watch women's basketball,” says Lobo. “It's just someone going, ‘I'm going to parachute in and get more @-replies on Twitter than I get all year by making these inflammatory comments.’ Normally I try to ignore it, because I don't want to feed the trolls, but it's just like, why every year?”

So essentially, if you are tempted to criticize the UConn women’s team for being just too dang good, again—don’t. Yes, even if it wins the tournament a 12th time this year (which it very well might!). Instead, use these few maddening weeks to learn about some of the teams aiming to give them a run for their money.

“If you actually invest an hour into watching, instead of just reacting to a score you see on SportsCenter, there's great stuff there,” Lobo concludes. “But people are often lazy, and so they don't spend that hour to figure out what women's basketball is all about. Introducing them to all the great storylines and players, that's our job.”