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Baylor coach Kim Mulkey could not have been more clear that Monday’s game against the Huskies at the XL Center carries little importance at this point in the season. The goal for top-ranked Lady Bears is to outright win their third straight Big 12 regular season championship.

The game is good for the sport. Mulkey knows that. But …

“Let me just make it perfectly clear,’’ Mulkey said. “We have four games, three games, whatever the rest of this month. The least important one is UConn. It is a great game that we agreed to play. But it’s great for the fans. It’s great for TV. And it’s great for women’s basketball. I’m not sure winning it means anything. I’m not sure getting beat means anything, for either team. It’s not going to take a No. 1 seed away from us if we lose. It’s not going to cement a No. 1 seed if we win.

“If you win people will say, `Well, you should win.’ If you lose, people will say, `Well, who really is the No. 1 No. 1 seed?’ It will be a great game for TV and a great game for fans. But we’re kind of caught in the middle of clinching (a Big 12 championship) and sharing one and there’s UConn. And we’re going to play like any competitor does. Tough, hard, be prepared, ready to go. But if this was the Final Four or the NCAA playoffs then it would mean a heck of a lot more.’’

UConn coach Geno Auriemma is not buying into this whole winning a conference championship thing. He is a firm believer that what you do during the regular season is to prepare your team to make a run in the NCAA tournament.

“We’re all trying to win conference championships,’’ Auriemma said. “Not everybody can, but we’re all trying to. And I don’t know how a game tomorrow night at 9 o’clock is going to impact one way or the other our ability to win the Big East championship or not. So I never looked at it that way. So you win the regular season conference championship and you lose in the second round in March. Do you think anybody’s going to have a parade for you because you won the conference championship? I’m almost to the point now where everything you do the entire season … Yeah, Goal No. 1: Win the regular season. Goal No. 2: Win the conference tournament. Goal No. 3: Get in the NCAA tournament and win the national championship. I understand all that. That’s everybody’s goal. But I think most of us in our situation everything we do from October 15 to the end of February is to get ready for March.’’

This game could be a preview of the national championship game in New Orleans April 9. For the Huskies, it’s a chance to avenge a 66-61 loss at Baylor last season when they blew an 11-point lead in the second half and to assess exactly where they stand at this juncture in the season.

“It’s big for us,’’ UConn sophomore Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis said. “It’s going to be a big test to see how much we’ve grown since the beginning of the season, how much we can overcome adversity. A lot of times in these big games we’ll get up and then we’ll start going through offensive droughts and the teams will take advantage of it. Last year we were up 11 points at Baylor and we gave that lead up. So we’ve got to make sure that once we get a lead we keep it and we keep playing hard.’’

“I think we’re both really good teams, but if you’re playing a sport you always want to be known as the best. You want to prove to yourself at least that you guys are the best. And I feel if we play Connecticut basketball, we use all of our weapons, play inside-outside then I think we’ll win.’’

Rich

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Junior All-American Bria Hartley returned to practice today for the Huskies as they prepare to face No. 1 Baylor Monday in a nationally televised showdown at the XL Center. She played just four minutes, 26 seconds in Saturday’s 65-45 win at Rutgers due to what UConn coach Geno Auriemma said was an illness.

Hartley was ill, still coughing today. But as far as she is concerned it wasn’t an illness that kept her out the game.

“That was the Coach’s decision, but all I could do is sit there and try to encourage my teammates,’’ Hartley said.

Hartley was not sure whether or not she was going to again play in the game after Auriemma pulled her and fellow starters Caroline Doty, Kelly Faris and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis with 15:34 left in the first half.

“He just said at halftime that Moriah (Jefferson) was starting the second half,’’ Hartley said.

It pained Hartley to discuss the events that took place at the Rutgers Athletic Center Saturday. But she admitted that collectively committing three fouls and handing Rutgers four free throws in the first 4:26. Hartley was called for one of the fouls.

“We can’t really start the game the way we did yesterday,’’ Hartley said. “So I think (the mass benching) is telling us that that’s unacceptable and we have to come out better than that. And I think it’s a challenge for when you do go back in to step it up a little bit.’’

Doty returned to the game with 12:25 left in the first half. Faris returned with 8:43 left. Mosqueda-Lewis returned with 5:29 left.

“Obviously, he was trying to make a point,’’ Faris said. “We didn’t deserve to be on the court and I think he did what he thought was right and gave somebody else a chance that would probably go out and do something at least better than what we did in that first few minutes of the game. We weren’t doing much. At that same time it’s a challenge for us. Everything’s always a challenge. I say it every time that if he gives us one more chance to go out on the court we’d better do it right.’’

“You kind of try to look at it in the most positive way you can,’’ Mosqueda-Lewis said. “You try to tell yourself, `Alright, this is a test. If I go back in I’m going to play my butt off and try to prove that I shouldn’t have been sitting on that bench or it’s not going to happen again.’ You kind of can’t really sulk about it. You know that he’s trying to make you better and you know that he wants you to learn something. And what we took away yesterday is that we can’t come out the way we did in the first couple of minutes. If we do that tomorrow night there’s definitely no coming back from that.’’

Faris believes that the game against Rutgers will have zero carryover against Baylor.

“That kind of stuff you’ve got to put it to the side and forget about it,’’ Faris said. “Let all the negative stuff go and focus on what’s ahead of us.

“I think we’ll turn it around. It was a pretty sluggish game. But that gives us the motivation to come out and really focus mentally and know that if we play like that (against Baylor) there’s absolutely no way that we can come out with win.’’

Rich

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According to Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, the months of January and February represent the time to put yourself in prime position to win a conference championship. It is not necessarily the time to play a high-profile non-conference game on the road.

The top-ranked Lady Bears clinched at least a tie for the Big 12 championship with a win over TCU Saturday. They will look to clinch the title outright against Texas Feb. 23. In between, they will face No. 3 UConn at the XL Center Monday (9 p.m.; ESPN2).

The match-up with the Huskies will be the latest that Baylor has played a non-conference game during in 13 seasons under Mulkey. Had it not been for the urging of ESPN officials, this game might not have been scheduled at all.

“The timing of it. Going on the road. A two-and-a-half hour flight. Getting back at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. Just the timing of it,’’ Mulkey said. “But I agreed to it because it is good for women’s basketball. I don’t know (UConn coach) Geno (Auriemma’s) Big East schedule, but I know the timing of ours is that I don’t want anything to take away from us having an opportunity to clinch an outright championship the next game when we get back from UConn. Initially, I said, `No.’ And just had a lot of phone calls from television, ESPN people, to give me their push why we should and I agreed to do it.

“I think it goes against what you’re trying to do with your program. Our program, really selfishly, is the most important thing in January and February to try to get to the postseason and to win a conference championship. But yet, at the same time, you feel a sense of a responsibility to do what’s good for the women’s game and keep the fan interest there and I understand that too. Which one is more important to me? It’s going to be Baylor University. But we’ll go and we’ll give it our best shot and I’m sure they will too. It should be a fantastic game. I just don’t want people to overemphasize it.’’

The latest non-conference game under Mulkey had been an 88-57 loss at LSU Jan. 20, 2006. That was also televised on ESPN2.

Auriemma also does not see this game as being ideal at this point in the season. But playing a non-conference game in February is nothing new for the Huskies over the past few seasons.

UConn faced Oklahoma on Feb. 13, 14 and 15 over the past three seasons, respectively. The Huskies also faced LSU Feb. 25, 2008 and Feb. 11, 2007 and Texas Feb. 12, 2006.

“I think it’s good in the sense that you kind of get away from the conference games for a while,’’ Auriemma said. “It’s a game that really doesn’t affect your ability to win a championship. Every conference game has an impact on whether you win the Big East regular season championship or not. This game doesn’t. And I think any time you can do that, to just play a game that’s kind of a preview of the kind of game you hope to play in March I think it’s always good. Regardless of whether it’s January, February.

“It’s not ideal in the middle of February. I think by now you’d like to just kind of be in a rhythm. But I think it’s good for your younger guys to see this is what potentially it could look like in March. So in that respect I think it’s pretty good.’’

Rich