It had been 866 days since the last time Geno Auriemma had seen his Connecticut women’s basketball team lose a game. When you go that long a period of time without experiencing an emotion, there’s no telling how you’re going to react when it finally reappears.
Misssissippi State’s buzzer-beater even made UConn coach Geno Auriemma smile
You either laugh or you cry.
UConn saw its 111-game winning streak snapped Friday night in just about the most dramatic fashion imaginable: An overtime buzzer-beater in the Final Four. When the moment finally game and the unfamiliar feeling of a defeat swept over Auriemma for the first time in two and-a-half years, all the legendary coach could do was smile.
The loss was UConn’s first since an early season defeat at the hands of Stanford on Nov. 17, 2014. For many members of Auriemma’s team, it was their first experience with a college loss of any sort.
“They’ve sent a lot of kids to the locker room over the years feeling the way they’re feeling right now,” Auriemma said of his team after the game. “Now they’re part of what a normal college experience is. I reminded them that it’s not normal, what we’ve been doing. This doesn’t happen in real life. What they’re experiencing now, that’s real life. What we do going forward will probably be more important than anything that they did this year.”
See More:
