HARTFORD, Conn. _ The UConn women's basketball team will be a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, a surprising twist after the Huskies were ranked second in the Associated Press poll the final eight weeks of the season. It is the first time UConn has not been a No. 1 seed in the tournament since 2006.
"We felt that it came down strength of schedule, strength of conference, as well as how they were playing down the stretch," Ronda Lundin Bennett, chair of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Selection Committee said in an interview with ESPN. She added that the committee members agreed other teams were playing better than the Huskies coming down the stretch of the season.
The seed doesn't mean much to coach Geno Auriemma, he said Monday evening.
"I don't think it matters one way or the other," he said. "We've lost the national championship being the No. 1 seed and we've won national championships being the 2 or 3 seed, if I'm not mistaken."
Auriemma sarcastically added that with two losses this season, he expected to be a No. 4 or No. 5 seed. UConn's membership in the American Athletic Conference would not have mattered if the team went undefeated, Auriemma said.
"Not if we had gone undefeated, would it? So if we had won those two games we lost we would be a No. 1 seed, right?" Auriemma said. "Then the strength of our conference wouldn't mean (crap) would it? There goes that theory. So yeah, we have to go undefeated every year, basically, is what they're saying."
UConn lost two games in the regular season, falling to Louisville and Baylor, but finished the season as regular-season AAC champions and won the conference tournament. The bracket puts the Huskies in the same regional as Louisville, which gave UConn one of its two losses this season, along with Maryland, Tennessee and Oregon State, among others.
UConn's first two rounds of the tournament will be played in Gampel Pavilion, with the Huskies taking on Towson at 6:30 p.m. Friday. If UConn wins, it would face the winner of Buffalo versus Rutgers Sunday.
UConn senior Napheesa Collier said she isn't bothered by the seed but was confused.
"In terms of playing it doesn't mean much," she said. "We still have X amount of games to play, and we're still going to do everything. I thought it was pretty crazy that we were a two-seed, but we're still going to prepare the way we were before. It doesn't change much for us in terms of how we're going to play or what we're wanting to do in this tournament.
"I just don't understand it. I wasn't in that room when they made that decision. I wouldn't have made that decision. I don't know why they did. It's in the past. There's nothing we can do to change that. We can't focus on that. We just have to focus on the games coming up."
The past two seasons UConn has lost in the Final Four, claiming its last national title in 2016. The Huskies won a total of 11, all under Auriemma, and made 19 Final Four appearances. Overall, the Huskies are 118-19 in the NCAA Tournament.
This was one of the first seasons in a long time where Auriemma wasn't sure where his team would land and who they would be playing. In a season where multiple top-10 teams have been upset and everyone's lost at least one game, no one was completely certain about how the bracket would shake out.
The Huskies sit at 31-2 going into the NCAA Tournament, and one of their biggest concerns will be senior Katie Lou Samuelson's health. Samuelson suffered a back injury against Houston at the end of the regular season, sitting out the regular season finale and the AAC tournament to heal. Auriemma said he fully expects the senior to return for the first game in Storrs.
