HARTFORD, Conn. _ Lately UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma has been exhausted when he goes home from practice each day.
Every little thing has to be addressed, Auriemma has said. There's no skipping over anything.
That's what this preseason has been like for Auriemma, who enters his 35th season seeking a 13th straight Final Four berth but also facing one of the more perplexing challenges of his career.
Napheesa Collier and Katie Lou Samuelson _ the program's highest scoring duo and the only remaining players from UConn's most recent national championship team _ graduated in the offseason, leaving Auriemma with only three returners who played at least 15 minutes per game last season. With all but one member of the 2017 class transferring out, the coach was at one point left with only eight scholarship players (including one incoming freshman), before he corralled newcomers from Murray State, Tennessee and Poland.
The pieces he's working with are promising. But with a relatively inexperienced group, several unproven players and a major unresolved eligibility issue, the 2019-20 Huskies enter the season as a rarely seen work in progress.
"It really does feel like the last number of years, it's almost been on autopilot. It just kept rejuvenating itself," Auriemma said. "Now we're at a point where I don't know if that's the case. I don't know that there's one or two kids in our program that can step up and be what Lou and Pheesa were."
That doesn't mean this year's team can't live up to the program's standard of excellence; it might just look different than previous years and take them a bit longer to put it all together.
"Part of me is like, don't expect a lot early on because it's not going to look great. And the other part of me is, when these guys actually do figure it out, we're going to be really good," Auriemma said. "After January, we're going to start getting really, really good every day. And then where it ends, I don't know. We'll see."
