Perhaps the person least concerned by the Huskies' loss to Stanford last week is coach Geno Auriemma. It's such a rare occurrence that people come out of the woodwork to tell the nine-time NCAA champ exactly what went wrong. Auriemma finds this all very amusing.
"It's like, when you lose a game [in the regular season] it's 'Oh crap, there goes the title, there goes the national championship.' That is absolutely crazy," Auriemma said, via the Hartford Courant's John Altavilla.
"But at the same time, I don't think it was a great game to play for us, this early, on the road [in terms of preparedness]. It's a tough game to play, the second game of the year, when [your team] is not all there. We were all there last season and Stanford wasn't [UConn won by 19 at Gampel on Nov. 11, 2013].
"Imagine if we had won that game [at Stanford]? We would have come home and the players would be saying, 'Right coach, stick that up your butt. Seriously, that's exactly how it is these days. … Sometimes, some teams need to be reminded of things.
"Look, some teams don't deserve to lose. If someone told me the 2009-10 team needed a loss to prepare it for the NCAA tournament, I would have said no. If that team lost, the NCAA tournament should have been canceled. That's how good they were, just like the 2002 team.
"But there are other teams … The more games they win, the more they are allowed to think how good they are, it's not good for them. They needed that. And that Texas beat Stanford a few days later just made it harder for them. They were like, 'Really, come on.' "
