The Start Of Something Big

Grossman, a 5' 11" veteran of Israel's national team, had a European's knack for moving, shooting and passing, plus a defensive toughness that was traceable to two years in the military and a couple of age-group judo titles back in her homeland. The first gulf war had broken out in the midst of that season, with Saddam Hussein aiming Scud missiles at Tel Aviv, where her family lived. "She'd call home every day, hoping for good news," remembers Lishness.

For her part, Lishness brought a film-at-11 game worthy of the town in which she grew up, Bristol, home of ESPN. At 5' 11" she could grab the rim, and once in a while she even put up triple doubles. "Laura was very talented and very athletic," remembers Baer. "Coach would yell and swear at her, and she'd [say] F-U right back and go about her business. She walked to a different beat."

As for Bascom, who came from a tiny high school in Epping, N.H., she had wanted to get lost in the student body at a big state school but without winding up too far from her mother, who suffered from multiple sclerosis (and who would pass away her junior year). When Bascom told people back home that she was going to UConn, they thought of the similarly sounding Canadian territory and responded with earnest queries about dogsleds and immigration papers and how cold it would be. "I'd say, 'It's the University of Connecticut.' And they'd go, 'Well, why didn't you just say that?' It was the concept of it. Now you don't have to say anything. But when I first got there, UConn had just two winning seasons. I wanted to go somewhere to build something."

Though she was one of the team's tallest players and nominally held down the middle, Bascom sometimes played the point, and she would sink 49 three-pointers that season while becoming the school's alltime leading scorer. "She was the most unassuming-looking great player," says Pattyson. "Kerry wasn't any great physical specimen, but she could score in absolutely any situation."

It was Bascom's fate to be subjected to Auriemma's hazing, as Rebecca Lobo and Kara Wolters would be several years later: "You're the worst player in America! Why'd I waste a scholarship on you?" Of course today Auriemma calls Bascom, now Kerry Bascom Poliquin and a case manager for a social-services agency in Dover, N.H., "as good a player as I've ever coached. And as clutch a player as I've ever coached."

Good as Bascom was, she was enough of an interchangeable part—as were her teammates—that the Huskies became maddeningly hard to guard. "We didn't throw the ball in the post unless we felt like it, because we didn't have to," Auriemma says. "We had five guys out there who could shoot threes. No one had seen anything like that back in 1991."

The coach would often tell his team, "You know the advantage we have? When we walk out on the court, the other team's going to say, 'Where's the starters?' Because we're gonna walk in looking like a Division III team."

THAT PHENOMENON REVEALED ITSELF EARLY IN THE season, shortly after Connecticut lost to Big Ten powers Iowa and Purdue. If UConn were to lose a home game by 17 points today, as the Huskies did to the Hawkeyes that November, it would be "unthinkable," says Baer, now Debbie Baer Fiske, the associate athletic director at St. Joseph College in West Hartford. "But to us it wasn't something devastating. It just meant we had more work to do. Then Auburn came into our building. They thought they owned it."

The Huskies beat Auburn, then ranked No. 2, and vaulted into the polls. They would sail through the Big East season, stumbling only at Pittsburgh and Providence, each time by two points, to win the regular-season conference crown. As January turned to February, the players found themselves measuring their progress by the crowds. "Let's fill the lower bowl" gave way to a more ambitious goal. Fans now turned out early to catch warmups, and some 5,420 showed up on a Sunday afternoon for a rout of Syracuse, a game that tipped off 30 minutes late to accommodate the walk-up.

After comfortable defeats of Villanova and Seton Hall in the Big East tournament, UConn moved into the final against Providence, a helter-skelter bunch that led the nation in scoring at 98 points per game. UConn's challenge would be to control tempo: When the Huskies had a clear chance to break the Friars' press, they'd look up the floor for a layup; more often, though, they followed Auriemma's orders to pull the ball out, run the shot clock down to 10 or 12 seconds, then hop into a play. During a quick TV interview at halftime, a frustrated Providence coach Bob Foley suggested that the Huskies were afraid to join the Friars' brisk style. No matter: UConn shot 57%, and Bascom and Pattyson scored at will inside, going 20 for 28 between them in the Huskies' 79-74 victory.