CHICAGO _ Monday night, No. 16 DePaul nearly erased a 26-point UConn lead, closing within four early in the fourth quarter and giving the undefeated, No. 2 Huskies a run for their money before UConn ultimately pulled out a 10-point victory.
UConn may have been a few clutch DePaul shots away from losing the lead, and perhaps the game, but coach Geno Auriemma already can't wait to go at it against the Blue Demons and his longtime friend Doug Bruno multiple times next year. With UConn headed to the Big East over the summer, the schools will play each other in conference play twice each season.
"I hope that however long he's coaching at DePaul and I'm coaching at UConn that we play each other three times a year: home, away, and in the (Big East) tournament," Auriemma said. "That would be fun."
Even after the Huskies left the Big East for the AAC in 2013, UConn and DePaul continued to face each other yearly beginning in the 2014-15 season. Though most of the matchups weren't particularly close (UConn won all but one of them by at least 30 points), Auriemma always appreciated the challenge of competing against a coach and a team as tough as DePaul's.
"Every time we play DePaul, it's unique for a lot of reasons, but it's not like playing any other team," Auriemma said. "And each year that goes by, the challenge is going to be greater and greater. It's part of why we're excited to be in that league next year, because we know those are the kind of challenges that are going to exist everywhere we go. It's going to be hard, and it's supposed to be, especially here."
The numbers back Auriemma up. Bruno has led the program to 17 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, the most behind Tennessee, UConn, Stanford, and Notre Dame. Since 1988, the Blue Demons have made four Sweet Sixteens (most recently in 2016) and have claimed five Big East regular-season titles in the last six years. DePaul entered Monday's contest as the highest-scoring team in the country, with an unparalleled dedication to the three-ball and an incredibly fast-paced style of play, causing chaos with its defensive pressure, and whatever other tricks Bruno has up his sleeve.
Bruno's still looking to take his program to the next level, and in his mind, regularly playing teams like UConn is one step toward achieving that. Though Bruno is still winless against Auriemma, Monday's loss (DePaul's second this year) marked the closest game the two schools have had since the 2007-08 season.
"I just really believe in playing the best," Bruno said. "They are the best. They are the best program in the history of intercollegiate basketball, men or women. They have set the bar and I just think if you're going to ascend the bar ... (Notre Dame) put themselves in position to be competitive with UConn, and that's our goal."
The yearly matchups have also been perpetuated due to Bruno and Auriemma's longtime friendship. The two got to know each other through the coaching circuit decades ago and their friendship has stuck.
"It was a relationship based on all the other things that we enjoy about each other's company, and basketball just happens to be one of those things," Auriemma said. "It's a lifelong friendship that goes way, way beyond basketball. His family's part of my family, and my family's part of his."
As one of Auriemma's closest friends in the basketball world and one of his assistant coaches for the U.S. national team earlier in the decade, Bruno figures he understands the inner workings of the UConn program more than most. His unique relationship to Auriemma and the program has not only informed his own coaching approach, but also what has helped UConn sustain its level of excellence and dominance over the last three decades.
"What I'm so impressed with is they just do the normal, daily, grunt, grit things that you have to do to sustain a program," Bruno said. "They work very hard at getting their players better. Their players get better at UConn, they get a lot better at UConn. That's teaching, that's coaching, and that's a tribute to Geno and his staff. ... (And) people don't understand how hard he works to recruit. They all work to recruit as if they've never won a national championship. They work very hard to evaluate and evaluate early, and they also have a very high standard of what they want from a character perspective, and then they go after it.
"They work this thing as if they've never won a national championship and that's what you kind of don't see when you're just looking in from the outside and Geno gives a funny soundbite and you don't understand that because you're around it every day."
Auriemma has previously cautioned people from comparing this year's UConn team to those from previous years, and the ups and downs of the first nine games of the season indicate that's a fair assessment. But to Bruno, a "down" year for UConn is still a great year by most standards.
"When he has one of those (once-in-a-lifetime players) on his team or sometimes two of those on his team, they are very, very, very, very special," Bruno said. "But he's also had years where he doesn't have that kind of player, and they're still really good players. I mean, these are some of the best players in the country. They're all going to play in the WNBA. This is not a bad group of basketball players ... But he's created a standard, and the peaks and valleys of his standard are still pretty high. They're still pretty high valleys."
