UConn–Tennessee rivalry
The women's basketball rivalry between the Tennessee Lady Volunteers from the University of Tennessee and the Connecticut Huskies from the University of Connecticut. It was one of the fiercest rivalries in college basketball, and perhaps the only one to reach national consciousness out of the women's game. The matchup featured two long-tenured and media savvy coaches generally acknowledged among the top five ever in their sport, over two dozen players who went on to play in the WNBA, and two programs that have combined for 16 national championships. Their head-to-head matchups are consistently the top-rated games in the college women's field.
Until the 2006-07 season, the two programs met annually in winter at one or both of the schools, but the rivalry is unique for having a third of its games occurring in the women's NCAA tournament. Four times, the national championship has been on the line.
The schools started playing each other in 1995. As of early 2007, UConn leads the series 13-9, including 5-2 in the tournament and 4-0 for the title. However, the Lady Vols have won the last three against UConn. On the day of every meeting, both schools have been ranked in the top fifteen in the Associated Press rankings.
On June 8, 2007, it was announced the schools would discontinue the regular-season series.[1]
The coaches
The rivalry is notable among team sports in that it almost unerringly focuses on the sidelines rather than the floor. The two coaches were far and away the best known and best paid in their sport,[2] with both being in the Basketball Hall of Fame and Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. Between them, they account for over 1,700 wins.
On the Tennessee side was Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest NCAA Division I college basketball coach, male or female. Summitt has won eight NCAA women's tournaments. She is the acknowledged dean of women's college basketball in the modern era. She has been the Naismith College Coach of the Year six times.
On the UConn side is Geno Auriemma, who has won nine of the last nineteen NCAA women's tournaments, four at the expense of Summitt in the finals. A media firebrand in the heart of ESPN country, Auriemma has become the most accomplished coach in the last decade, at one point posting a 90-game winning streak. He has seven Naismith awards to Summitt's six.
The two have poured gasoline on the fire in press conferences, with Auriemma at one point calling Tennessee the "Evil Empire". The two have apparently mended fences after some sparring, Auriemma noted in his autobiography, Geno.
The games
The two schools first met on January 16, 1995, when televised women's basketball was a rarity. At this high point, with dominant players such as Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters and Jennifer Rizzotti, UConn's program was on the rise, beating Tennessee during the regular season and again for the title and an undefeated regular season. They would win another rivalry game in 1996.
The next three years belonged to Summitt, as the Lady Vols won four of the next five meetings with the Huskies en route to three straight national championships. The "Meeks"—Chamique Holdsclaw, Semeka Randall, and Tamika Catchings—and point guard Michelle Marciniak powered Tennessee past all rivals, including UConn.
On the horizon, though, were Auriemma's most dominant classes yet, and possibly the strongest lineup ever in the women's game. The starting five of Sue Bird, Asjha Jones, Swin Cash, Tamika Williams, and (for the latter part of the run) Diana Taurasi gave UConn four of the next five national championships. In that run of 2000 to 2004, UConn crushed Tennessee in the rivalry, winning nine of the next eleven meetings, including the 2000, 2003, and 2004 championship games.
In the five seasons after Taurasi went to the WNBA, Summitt has rebounded with strong new players like Candace Parker, and has won each meeting. UConn's program lacked a dominant scorer like Taurasi, and Tennessee made the most of this vulnerability. Since the cancellation of the annual game, Tennessee has won a championship and UConn has won 2 championships.
With these results, the rivalry continues to be top-of-mind in the women's game. A matchup in the 2002 Final Four at the Alamodome in San Antonio was in front of the largest crowd in women's history (29,619). The 2006 regular-season game at Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville drew the largest crowd ever for a regular-season women's game (24,653).
After the 2007 game, Auriemma noted that the rivalry, while still intense, has lost some of its edge because of increasing parity in the women's game. As an illustration, 2006 was the first time since 1999 that neither UConn nor Tennessee had made the Final Four. He remarked,[3] "In some sense, a small sense, it's still the Red Sox and the Yankees. It still is. But there's still a lot more good things going on in college basketball now. That's just the reality of it."
Results
| Date | Winning team | Losing team | Site | Series | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 16, 1995 | Connecticut | 77 | Tennessee | 66 | Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, Storrs, CT | Connecticut 1-0 |
|
| April 2, 1995 | Connecticut | 70 | Tennessee | 64 | Target Center, Minneapolis, MN | Connecticut 2-0 |
NCAA National Championship |
| January 6, 1996 | Connecticut | 59 | Tennessee | 53 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 3-0 |
|
| March 29, 1996 | Tennessee | 88 | Connecticut | 83* | Charlotte Coliseum, Charlotte, NC | Connecticut 3-1 |
NCAA Final Four |
| January 5, 1997 | Connecticut | 72 | Tennessee | 57 | Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT | Connecticut 4-1 |
|
| March 24, 1997 | Tennessee | 91 | Connecticut | 81 | Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Iowa City, IA | Connecticut 4-2 |
NCAA Elite Eight |
| January 3, 1998 | Tennessee | 84 | Connecticut | 69 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 4-3 |
|
| January 10, 1999 | Tennessee | 92 | Connecticut | 81 | Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, Storrs, CT | tie 4-4 | |
| January 8, 2000 | Connecticut | 74 | Tennessee | 67 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 5-4 |
|
| February 2, 2000 | Tennessee | 72 | Connecticut | 71 | Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, Storrs, CT | tie 5-5 | |
| April 2, 2000 | Connecticut | 71 | Tennessee | 52 | Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, PA | Connecticut 6-5 |
NCAA National Championship |
| December 30, 2000 | Connecticut | 81 | Tennessee | 76 | Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT | Connecticut 7-5 |
|
| February 1, 2001 | Tennessee | 92 | Connecticut | 88 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 7-6 |
|
| January 5, 2002 | Connecticut | 86 | Tennessee | 72 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 8-6 |
|
| March 29, 2002 | Connecticut | 79 | Tennessee | 56 | Alamodome, San Antonio, TX | Connecticut 9-6 |
NCAA Final Four |
| January 4, 2003 | Connecticut | 63 | Tennessee | 62* | Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT | Connecticut 10-6 |
|
| April 8, 2003 | Connecticut | 73 | Tennessee | 68 | Georgia Dome, Atlanta, GA | Connecticut 11-6 |
NCAA National Championship |
| February 5, 2004 | Connecticut | 81 | Tennessee | 67 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 12-6 |
|
| April 6, 2004 | Connecticut | 70 | Tennessee | 61 | New Orleans Arena, New Orleans, LA | Connecticut 13-6 |
NCAA National Championship |
| January 8, 2005 | Tennessee | 68 | Connecticut | 67 | Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT | Connecticut 13-7 |
|
| January 7, 2006 | Tennessee | 89 | Connecticut | 80 | Thompson-Boling Arena, Knoxville, TN | Connecticut 13-8 |
|
| January 6, 2007 | Tennessee | 70 | Connecticut | 64 | Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT | Connecticut 13-9 |
|
Connecticut victories are shaded ██ blue. Tennessee victories shaded in ██ orange.
* indicates overtime game
Other sports
Though the Connecticut Huskies and the Tennessee Volunteers no longer play each other in the regular season for women's basketball matchups, the rivalry has now begun to spread into other sports as the two schools have agreed to play each other in other matchups in the future. On September 4, 2008, UConn and Tennessee agreed to a home and home series in football for the 2015 and 2016 seasons, but in order to play Virginia Tech at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2016, the series has been postponed. Furthermore, because of UConn's "Gang of Five" status while Tennessee was in the "Power Five," the series may not be held.[4][5] Nearly a year later on July 22, 2009, Huskies men's basketball head coach Jim Calhoun and Vols men's basketball head coach Bruce Pearl agreed to a home and home basketball series in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons.[6][7] Summitt's son Tyler was on the Volunteers' roster for both games.
During the 2012-13 season, Tyler Summitt joined Marquette's coaching staff for the women's team, the final year of the pre-split Big East. The Huskies won against the Golden Eagles in both games. The Summitt family's rivalry is now at Connecticut 16, Summitts 10 (13-9 during the rivalry, Tyler Summitt was 1-1 at Tennessee against Connecticut as men's basketball player, 0-2 as Marquette's assistant coach).
Notes and references
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