It was time to flashback and flash-forward for the Huskies tonight at the Aqua Turf Club in Plantsville. The players and coaches posed for pictures and chatted with the impressive number of fans who paid a good sum of money for the opportunity to hangout with the 2009 national champions.
Renee Montgomery was back from her successful rookie season with Minnesota in the WNBA. Tahirah Williams was up from North Carolina where she is continuing her studies at Wake Forest. And Jamelle Elliott, who is the midst of her first season as the head coach at Cincinnati, was back too.
The cast of characters that was the 2008-09 Huskies family was back to celebrate a historical season in women’s basketball. They became the third team in history to complete a season 39-0. They also became the first team – men or women – to win every game by double digits. But as magical as last season was coach Geno Auriemma wanted to make sure that he delivered a message too. Last season was last season. Enjoy the event. Spend time with the fans and reflect on perfection. But this season is this season.
“The biggest thing I think is you’re not so much reliving it because you kind of relive it because people keep reminding you of it and you keep going to events where people bring it up,’’ Auriemma said. “I think it’s more of we’re celebrating. We’re allowing a lot of great UConn fans to appreciate once more what we did and we’re allowing our players to see how much the fans appreciate what we did. So it’s just kind of like a great get-together, and at the same time it’s putting a period after last year. This is it. This is over. This is the last thing we’re doing. When we get up tomorrow it’s time to start thinking about this year. And it’s not about defending national championships. I don’t buy that. We’re not defending anything. This is not defending national champions. Nobody’s going to take our trophy away from us. So we don’t have to guard it with our lives. That trophy’s ours. We earned it. This is about going out and seeing if we can get another one. And that process starts tomorrow.’’
Maya Moore said she has experienced no problems with her right knee this preseason. Remember, she suffered a sprain in an exhibition game against Australia in late June as a member of the USA World University Games Team.
As a precaution, she took the next several weeks off to rest. She said she’s been back playing at full capacity “probably for a couple weeks’’ now.
“I had planned on taking time off anyway the second half of the summer,’’ Moore said. “So I’m definitely convinced just going through high school and even through now about having a break, having a refuel time. I took that (time) from the end of July, August … It was active. I would do things as far as rehab, biking and stuff like that. But not a lot of pounding because we do so much pounding. I’ve been doing everything for our preseason. I’m back in it. I’m doing all the workouts and feeling good. So it feels good to get back and play pick-up and just get on the court.’’
Moore is looking forward to the challenge of competing at the USA Basketball Senior National Team training camp Sept. 30 through Oct. 5 at American University in Washington, D.C. This is the latest challenge she will be face in her career. A career she hopes will some day land her a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
“Anytime you can get a new challenge it’s always exciting,’’ Moore said. “It’s kind of tough how I’m going to mentally prepare myself and approach it. I do have to recognize that they are some of the best players in the world, but there’s a certain level of competition that you can always bring regardless of the talent level. I think at this level the talent is all great. So I’m going to have to do something to separate myself besides talent, which is what Coach has definitely been working on with me this preseason.’’
UConn will have a large presence at the training camp next week. Moore, Tina Charles, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash and Asjha Jones are among the 22 players that have been invited. Of course, Auriemma is the head coach of the Senior National Team.
“I think everybody acknowledged that Tina was a great player coming out of high school and Maya was a great player coming out of high school,’’ Auriemma said. “And my job is just to make sure they get better and don’t go backwards. With Maya and Tina and Asjha and Swin and D and Sue, I think UConn will be pretty well represented there and where it all ends up I have no idea. But everyone of those guys was really good coming out of high school. So it wasn’t like we took hamburger and made filet mignon out of it.’’
Rich
