A perfect storm: An oral history of the UConn team that changed womens hoops

As the team bus carrying the 1995 national champion Connecticut women’s basketball team rolled toward campus, players looked outside the window to spot the helicopters tracking them. Across the state, news tickers interrupted soap operas with updates on the team’s travel progress.

“Thousands and thousands of people coming to the parade and the airport,” long-time associate head coach Chris Dailey said.

“We couldn’t believe what was happening,” head coach Geno Auriemma said.

The Connecticut program and women’s basketball as a whole had been building toward a breakthrough like this. The Huskies’ 35-0 season, capped with a riveting championship victory over powerhouse Tennessee, captured the nation’s imagination and forged a connection with their home state that has endured for a quarter-century. Oh, and it launched a dynasty that has now claimed 11 championships.

But you always remember the first.

“We’ve obviously had great teams and great fans,” said Dailey, “but the first time you do anything — that team, the way everything fell into place, it was just a magical year.”

“It was innocent and it was pure and it was fresh,” Auriemma said. “Undefeated, national champions, the way we did it, the personalities on the team, who we beat — everything just kind of came together in a perfect storm.”

The expectations for the 1994-95 season started moments after the previous one ended. Top-seeded UConn had lost the regional final to No. 3 North Carolina, just its third loss in 33 games that season.

Dailey: As Geno and I are walking out to the bus, one of our fans yelled out, “Hey Coach, next year you guys are gonna be really good!” And we’re like, “What were we this year?”

Auriemma: We were going to have all the pieces in place — enough seniors with Rebecca (Lobo) and Pam (Webber), a couple of juniors in Jen (Rizzotti) and Jamelle (Elliott) and the sophomores that had played a big role with Kara (Wolters) and Carla (Berube). We were adding Nykesha Sales. I felt we had the right pieces, but I didn’t know.

Rebecca Lobo, senior forward: I was at the Final Four in 1994 watching, and I remember one of the feelings I had was that these teams weren’t any better than us. We belong here. This is the realistic goal for us.

The team traveled to Italy, France and Belgium that summer. Before departing, it had 10 extra practices it wouldn’t have been afforded by the NCAA if not for the trip. Auriemma used that time to install the triangle offense.

Auriemma: I’m thinking to myself, if you have a center that’s hard to play against, you have a four-man that can stretch you out and handle the ball like a guard, and then you have a dominant point guard, you have the three pieces that matter the most.

Lobo: We flourished in a system where you could read and react and play on instinct and so much is predicated on a willingness to pass, because that’s what we all liked to do.

Dailey: We were totally prepared that after the trip to Italy, if it didn’t work, we were just going to scrap it and do something else.

Auriemma: So we went over there and it worked even better than I imagined. Before you know it, it was like second nature to us.

Lobo: We were playing against professional teams, we were playing against women who were a couple years out of college and were continuing to get better. And we were able to compete and succeed and win games. That showed us not only that the new offense worked, but it gave us another of those feelings that we belong here.

When the team got back to the States, formal practices couldn’t start until Oct. 15. And so, the team informally gathered for group weightlifting, running and pickup games — lots of pickup games.

Dailey: Rebecca used to hate the preseason.

Lobo: I can remember going into Coach Auriemma’s office just saying, “I cannot wait for practice to get here, because I’m tired of Jen and Jamelle beating the heck out of each other.”

Dailey: It would get to the point that it was so competitive and would get so ugly, they’d have to put the two of them on the same team. And then they’d always win, so that would make everyone else mad.

Lobo: If you play pickup, the worst people to play against are the ones who always call fouls if they miss a shot and never admit when they do foul. And Jen and Jamelle had both of those things combined. If they missed a shot, they’d call a foul, and then they’d beat the crap out of you and claim it was clean.

Pam Mitchell (née Webber), senior guard: Neither of them was going to back down — not to each other and not to anybody standing across the court from them. But that’s infectious and it makes everybody tougher and stronger.

Jamelle Elliott, junior forward: That’s probably one of the reasons why we weren’t roommates (anymore). But I’ve had quite a few teammates, and I’ve never had a better teammate than Jen. When I was on the floor with her, I felt like we were invincible.

Lobo: After Fridays we’d go to somebody’s room, order pizza and drink beer because we needed to have some sort of outlet after watching those guys go after each other for five days.

Dailey: They weren’t afraid to compete against each other, which made us a lot better. They weren’t afraid to be demanding, and they weren’t afraid to put the time in to be a great team.

Mitchell: Jen would dive headfirst into anything. That’s why she was padded from head to toe.

Kara Wolters, sophomore center: Having people who hold you accountable — and people who can handle being held accountable — those are important things.

The season started on Nov. 26 with a 107-27 rout of Morgan State. The Huskies won their first Big East game, against a Villanova team that would finish third in the conference, by 38 on Dec. 4. UConn scored 98 points on the road at NC State six days later, showing how potent that triangle offense could be. On Dec. 28, the Huskies hosted California — the team that had beaten them in Lobo and Webber’s first game as freshmen — and won by 47.

Joe Mullaney, St. John’s head coach: You went into the games hoping you could keep them within 30 or 40 points.

Pat Knapp, Georgetown head coach: There are too many good players on that team. They were ridiculous. Game-planning against them was brutal.

By mid-January, UConn was 12-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country. The biggest game in program history loomed on the schedule, against No. 1 Tennessee on Martin Luther King Day at Gampel Pavilion. The Lady Vols were off to a program-best 16-0 start, and they’d already won their first No. 1 versus No. 2 game of the season — by 36 over Stanford in December.

Lobo: Tennessee was the embodiment of success in the women’s college game at that time. That was who you grew up watching win national championships, that’s who the great players played for, that’s who the Olympians played for.

Dailey: They were the team you measured yourself against.

The game on ESPN would be a ratings smash, starting a new tradition of big women’s games on MLK Day. But it was Plan B all along. ESPN had first approached North Carolina, but the Tar Heels wanted the game at home. Only then did the network contact Pat Summitt.

Carol Stiff, program planner at ESPN: Pat said to me, “You know I have Auburn right before that, and you know how good Auburn is,” and I didn’t say a word, and then a long pause went by, and her quote to me was, “For the good of the game, I’ll take the game.”

The game was so big the AP poll was held an extra day to wait for its result.

(Bob Stowell / Getty Images)

Dailey: From the minute we started practice (that season), we went against pressure. We didn’t say to them, “This is what Tennessee’s going to do.” But we did that from the very first practice.

Auriemma: I didn’t show them any film. Going into that game, they had no idea of any personnel. They didn’t know anything. And I didn’t care. I didn’t want them to know.

The practice before the game was maybe as intense, as brutal in terms of how they went after each other as any practice I’ve ever seen. I remember stopping it and saying, “We’re good to go, guys. Let’s go.”

Dailey: The second you walked in the building, there was an electricity in the arena.

Lobo: Not only was Gampel sold out, but it was busting-at-the-seams sold out.

Auriemma: It had a championship-game feel to it. It felt like every possession was going to decide the game.

Despite Lobo fouling out with 4:52 left, UConn polished off a 77-66 win. It was voted No. 1 in the country the next day.

Dailey: We left the court, but not one (fan) would leave. You could hear it in the locker room, the sound of the bleachers and the banging, and we had to send the kids back out to acknowledge our fans and thank them. It was a special moment in Connecticut basketball.

Wolters: We had never seen it before. That was the beginning of thinking that, wow, this could be really big not only for us but for women’s basketball getting attention all over the place.

Lobo: We beat not only the No. 1 team in the country, but we beat the best program in the country.

(Bob Stowell / Getty Images)

In his 2005 autobiography, Auriemma called it “the pivotal moment of our program.”

Auriemma: Yeah, because we had never been in that situation before. Even though we’d been to the Final Four in ’91, we really didn’t touch as many people. We were still a novelty act. But this game, by winning that game the way it was played, the fact it was on national television, it turned everything around. It put us someplace we had never been before.

Stiff: At the end of the game, I’m watching Geno elated talking to the media, and then I walk down the long corridor at Gampel Pavilion and there was Pat standing outside the locker room with the stat sheet in front of her. She looked up with a very stern look in her eyes and said, “For the good of the game.”

From then on, the attention on the UConn program changed dramatically.

Dailey: We became America’s team.

Auriemma: I remember the next morning saying to my wife, “I really don’t want to go out. I just don’t want to leave the house.” It was a frenzy. I wasn’t prepared to deal with it and I didn’t want to deal with it.

Lobo: We were used to having five or six members of the local media there. That was normal for us. What was different was now People Magazine wanted to come and talk to us, The New York Times was there regularly, NBC Nightly News, morning shows, ESPN — there was a much bigger national presence.

Jen Rizzotti, junior guard: It was pretty bizarre. We could not go anywhere in the state of Connecticut without being recognized.

Lobo: The beginning of my senior year, my teammates and I could walk through Buckland Hills Mall without too much bother. By the time the Tennessee game happened, we could not make it through without stopping for countless autographs, tons of people talking to us about the team.

Carla Berube, sophomore guard: A lot of it fell on Rebecca’s shoulders.

Auriemma: The way Rebecca is, it’s like she was born for that role. We had the perfect person in place to be able to handle all the things that were being asked of someone to handle.

Wolters: Honestly, we didn’t think, “Oh my God, we should be undefeated.” It was like stepping on quicksand and you sneak one step before your foot falls in, and you test it out and then you go to the next one and the next one. That’s kind of how it was — one step at a time.

Dailey: They were on a mission just to be great. We did not have to do a lot to push them to want to be great. That was within that team and their personality. Probably it was driven by Jamelle and Jen in terms of never letting your foot off the gas.

Rizzotti: Geno certainly didn’t let us forget when we sucked in practice every day. He kept our egos pretty much at bay and kept us on our goal. But he never talked about being undefeated, he never talked about winning a national championship. He talked about preparing for the next game and wanting to be at our best all the time.

Lobo: UConn practices in some ways are just about surviving. You’re trying to get in and out of that two or three hours without him yelling at you the whole time. So it was easy to stay focused on the task at hand, because the second you slipped up in a rebounding drill, he was going to be all over you for screwing up the rebounding drill.

UConn entered the NCAA Tournament 29-0, having won its 21 Big East games by an average margin of 35. Hartford Courant columnist Owen Canfield described it as “demoralizingly uncompromising in its execution.” Even Auriemma was impressed, saying after a win in the Big East tournament, “They play the game as well as it’s ever been played.”

Not everyone was onboard yet.

Rizzotti: Even after we (beat Tennessee), there was still talk that we only won because we were at home. “If they play again, there’s no way UConn will win again.”

Auriemma: We operated with a chip on our shoulder every single day. The competition wasn’t good enough — blah blah blah. We hadn’t been tested — blah blah blah.

Rizzotti: I remember not feeling like they thought we were the real deal. That’s not really how you want to fuel us because we were really ready to prove we were. We loved having that underdog role.

People thought Virginia was going to beat us.

In the regional final against Virginia, UConn surged to an early 29-10 lead — only to allow the Cavaliers to score on their next 13 possessions and claim a 44-37 lead at the half.

Auriemma: That game was probably the most difficult game we played all year.

Wolters: We got rattled in that game because we had never been there. It was like, “Oh my God.”

Mitchell: Oh my God, that was super nerve-racking.

Lobo: That was the moment that had stopped us the year before. Are we going to let this moment be bigger than us again, or are we going to rise to meet it?

Dailey: There’s not a whole lot you have to tell a team with the experience we had and the upperclassmen we had. There wasn’t a whole lot we had to say.

Auriemma: When I got in there, it was already done. Jen and Jamelle had taken care of that.

Lobo: I mostly remember Jen and Jamelle saying, “We’re not gonna lose this effing game,” and immediately just having a different feeling and a belief that they were right.

It’d be one thing if they just said that and we hadn’t built up months of trust and belief. But we had experienced what that was like in all those pickup games. When they said we’re not going to lose this game, you knew it was true.

Elliott: Going into that season, everything I did was solely driven on the fact that if we got back to this game again, we weren’t going to have the same result. That’s the reason why I ran the hills and did all the extra work: to get back to this game and be successful. Just imagine what that conversation would be like.

UConn held the Cavaliers to 19 second-half points, coming from behind to win 67-63. Six days later, the Huskies trounced Stanford by 27 in the national semifinal to set up a title date with Tennessee.

Auriemma: I remember (Stanford coach) Tara VanDerveer saying, “Tennessee is gonna beat them tomorrow.” Like, holy shit, what more do we have to do?

Rizzotti: It was almost like we couldn’t wait to get to that game, we couldn’t wait to get to that second chance. You would think they would be the team champing at the bit to play us because we beat them, but we were really champing at the bit for a chance to prove we could beat them on a neutral floor.

Dailey: Tennessee still tried to intimidate our players in the warmups when we were stretching. I look back now and it makes me laugh, but when it was happening, I was like, “Who do they think they are?”

Rizzotti: I remember coming out for warmups and they were sitting on our side of the court and I had to kick them off. No one had clearly ever done that to them before. That set the tone for us.

Still, the first half of the championship game was a nightmare for UConn. Lobo picked up three fouls in just over seven minutes. Rizzotti and Wolters sat for chunks of the half with two fouls. The Huskies trailed by six at the break.

Elliott: I would probably say my biggest accomplishment was doing what I could to make sure at halftime we didn’t go in down by 18 instead of six.

Auriemma: My message was pretty simple: “If we were playing against another team that had three starters on the bench with fouls and played as badly as we played, how many would we be up?” They all said 30. “Exactly, and we’re down six. As bad as we’ve played, as bad as it’s gone, we’re two possessions from tying the game.”

And then the first play of the second half, they made a 3 to make it nine and I’m like, “Oh shit, so much for that theory.”

UConn didn’t take the lead for good until Rizzotti went coast to coast off a long rebound for a go-ahead layup with 1:53 on the clock. The Huskies led by four with 10 seconds remaining when they drew up one last play to clinch it.

Auriemma: That morning, we went over when we’ve got to get the ball inbounds, here’s what’s going to happen. La-dee-da. Now they’re coming over (to the huddle) with the pressure of the game and the intensity of the moment, my life flashed before my eyes. I’m thinking to myself, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what are we gonna do now?”

I kept eliminating people as they were running over. I ain’t giving this ball to Rizzotti because she’s so jacked up right now, she’s liable to bite the ball. I’m not giving it to Jamelle, she’ll start crying because she wants to win so bad. And I’m not going to put Nykesha in that spot because she’s only a freshman. I’ve got the perfect person: Carla Berube.

The sophomore Berube was a 68-percent foul shooter that season, and she was 1-for-3 that afternoon.

Auriemma: She has no pulse. That kid never gets flustered, she doesn’t change. I’m not even sure she has blood in her veins.

Dailey: She probably said four words in four years.

Auriemma: I turned my back to the court. I just wanted to listen. If I hear a clang, I’m gonna die.

Berube: Now as a coach, you’re not thinking it’s in the bag or feeling really good, because there’s still seconds left. As a player at that point, I was feeling confident like, “OK, I’m just gonna step up and end this.” I don’t remember feeling any pressure or nerves, and I’m not sure why.

Auriemma: All I heard was the net rippling. I don’t even think the net moved.

Berube’s free throws iced a 70-64 victory. Auriemma told CBS’ Dan Bonner, “We just beat one of the greatest teams ever, and I think we’re one of the best ever.”

(Bob Stowell / Getty Images)

Lobo: It was a feeling I don’t think I’d ever had before: just this sort of complete joy. And a joy of doing something and accomplishing something with a group of people who you love, who you’ve been through so much with. You’re having this moment together, and no one can really understand exactly what you’re feeling except for these other 10 people who are feeling exactly what you’re feeling.

Mitchell: There wasn’t a feeling of, “Thank goodness we did it.” It was just sheer joy.

Elliott: Those raw emotions — I mean, I haven’t watched the tape in over 20 years myself, but just talking about it gives me goosebumps.

Auriemma: Because it had been so farfetched six or seven years earlier that something like that could actually happen, the incredible feeling of, “I can’t believe we did this,” washes over you. It’s not until later at night that it really hits you — the magnitude of what you’ve done. There’s never been a feeling like that.

Sometime well after midnight, many of the players reconvened in Auriemma’s room, popping in the VHS tape from that afternoon’s game.

Lobo: He started treating it like a film session. He paused, “What are you doing here?”

Mitchell: Of course he did. Of course he had to break down some film.

Auriemma: Maybe three minutes into the game I go, “What the hell was that?” And what I got back from some of those guys, you can’t put it in print.

Lobo: At one point, Missy Rose looked at him and flipped him off. It was this funny and perfect moment — something you could never do in any other film session, but we’d just won the national championship. So dammit, Missy Rose is gonna flip off Coach Auriemma for criticizing us. It was perfect.

Auriemma: I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. It was hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun than I had that night.

The victory was front-page news in The New York Times. UConn’s success that season was a preface to the United States reclaiming gold at the 1996 Olympics in women’s basketball and the creation of two professional leagues: The ABL started play in the fall of 1996 and the WNBA started in the summer of 1997. In 1995, only seven of the 63 games in the women’s tournament were televised. That number jumped to 24 in 1996 and all 63 by 2003.

Rizzotti: That two-year period was like an explosion of popularity of the sport. Obviously there were players who played well before us that paved the way for us to have that opportunity. But our group is proud that we were a small part of this budding popularity.

Elliott: We’re not the only team that has done great things for women’s basketball. What made it unique about us is we struck at a time when the media was ready to really embrace women’s basketball nationally.

Auriemma: I don’t think it’s any coincidence: You had that happen in the spring of ’95 and the Olympics are coming to Atlanta and the WNBA on top of that. Everything was lined up for what happened to actually happen.

Lobo: You certainly look at that team now much differently than you would have in April of 1995. Now that we have some perspective, we see in a bigger way the impact that team had. Would the Olympic team have done a barnstorming tour across the country? I don’t know. Would the WNBA have started if it wasn’t for the seeds that were planted in 1995? I don’t know.

Wolters: We got a snowball rolling down a hill. And it just got bigger and bigger from there.

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Aldo Pusey

Update: 2024-06-29

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