Big East Tournament Championship Trophy Ceremony

Westbrook and the impactful Edwards joined Williams on the all-tournament team along with Villanova's Maddy Siegrist, Seton Hall's Lauren Park-Lane and Marquette's Karissa McLaughlin.[Vickie Fulkerson, The Day

www.newstimes.com/uconn/article/Why-this-Big-East-title-feels-different-for-UConn-16985454.php?t=84d6dc7f8f

UNCASVILLE — Confetti filled the air over the court and obscured, for a moment, the view of a celebration that looked so familiar but felt so different.

“You know what?” Christyn Williams said when it cleared, addressing the crowd as the Big East Tournament’s most outstanding player. “This is my favorite one. Let me tell you why this is my favorite one. This team, man, we’ve been through so much this year and we fought through everything and I’m just so proud.”

Like so many seniors at UConn before her, Williams had won a fourth conference tournament championship. Each one is followed by the usual sounds and sights, yellow ropes cordoning off an area for a ceremony, Kool and the Gang’s music blaring, metal clanking as a stage is erected, ladders offered only for the Huskies to ignore.

UConn, always with bigger goals in mind, doesn’t snip nets in this setting. A 70-40 victory over Villanova marked the 27th conference tournament championship in program history, something viewed by now as an automatic accomplishment, a necessary step, time spent roughing up neighbors before hitting the national stage.

This particular title, though ...

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You know what? It was probably more rewarding than most, perhaps any.

You know what? As much as UConn’s thorough performance at Mohegan Sun Arena signaled the potential for great things to follow — maybe another Final Four and/or another national championship — it also stood alone as something to appreciate on its own merit.

You know what? If ever there was a UConn team that deserved to exhale, look around, embrace everything celebratory and just enjoy the moment, it is this one.

The 2021-22 Huskies are the team that figured it out along the way, a team dismantled by injuries for the better part of three months only to emerged in March through all that confetti, adult-like in its approach to basketball, kid-like in a postgame party.

From Paige Bueckers’ knee injury on down to absences for COVID and bumps and bruises and whatever else, so much threatened to tear UConn apart this season. And it did for a bit. But the reconstructed version of this team has come together like the tightest fist.

UConn avenged its only conference loss by beating Villanova, the latest team suffocated by what looks to be the best defense in the nation. The Huskies look primed for another deep NCAA Tournament run. What really mattered Monday, though, was the moment.

So UConn smelled the roses. Players hugged. They soaked up ovations. They engaged with fans, reacted to U-C-O-N-N chants. They held a trophy high, pulled on white championship caps.

“We never lost sight of who we are and what we were trying to do,” Geno Auriemma told the crowd.

Later, he took the stage for a press conference next to Williams, Evina Westbrook and Aaliyah Edwards — each of them named to the all-tournament team.

“I mentioned to them in the locker room that it takes a lot to get to this point,” Auriemma said. “You start playing in November and you have a goal to win the regular season. And then you’ve got to prove it again over the course of three days. And by the time tonight comes around, whether you win or lose, you’re completely drained of everything if you did it right.

“If you did it right, there’s really nothing left that you can give. I think that’s the feeling that was there, that there’s really nothing left in the tank for these guys. And yet they found time to celebrate and enjoy and have fun.”

There are at least six others in a rotation now nine deep that also deserve some sort of recognition, for each figured out what role individual roles were required for the betterment of the team.

That isn’t easy. Players gladly defer, they sit. UConn, which has won 10 in a row since its loss to Villanova in Hartford, is wearing teams down with defense and in relentless waves. No player scored more than 16 points in any of the three conference tournament games.

That’s what Bueckers put up in the opener against Georgetown. She played just 27 minutes over the final two games, scoring just two points in each game. She’s sore. She’s still not herself. Imagine that? A team once so reliant on one particular player having found itself despite that player’s significant limitations.

The Huskies are playing with the enjoy of something that has been shaking since prior to Christmas and has finally been uncorked.

“Everything that we’ve been hit with this year, this team has handled it really well,” Westbrook said. “We went through a stretch where we were so used to being hit with something that when we weren’t, it felt weird. So I think we’ve handled it pretty well. And it’s prepared us for times like this when it’s going to get tough.”

After Villanova defeated Seton Hall in a semifinal Saturday night, its band chanted, “We want UConn.” The Huskies heard that, of course.

“We were like, ya’ll are going to get UConn,” Westbrook said.

“We didn’t want to lose to them again,” Williams said. “We just had our foot on the gas the entire game and we didn’t take it off.”

This UConn team is, finally, the UConn we’re used to seeing. The Huskies won by an average of 32.5 points at Mohegan and held opponents to 30.3% shooting. They looked like they often have in this tournament or ones like it, just unstoppable.

But it was different for how this point was reached — uphill instead of on cruise control.

“Every championship brings a new trophy to a kid who has never had one,” Auriemma said. “I think sometimes people think that it gets run of the mill. I always come back to this. It’s not 27 [championships] for Azzi [Fudd]. It’s not 27 for Caroline [Ducharme]. It’s not 27 for Aaliyah and all the other young players. And to be able to do it without having to rely on Paige, I think that was really impactful for them, how they felt, because there was this perception early on at one point that without Paige we’re not very good. You know?”

And then came a shot at Muffet McGraw, whose comments about UConn — at a time when the Huskies were struggling — irked Auriemma.

“An ex-coach who doesn’t know [squat] about anything said that recently,” Auriemma said. “And I think we proved her wrong, that without Paige we don’t have any good players.”

Nika Muhl is a bull on the perimeter. Edwards is playing ferociously inside. Westbrook and Williams are responsible and efficient. Fudd is production now, not just hype. The list goes on.

Bueckers was the last player to come off the bench Monday. And then she was at the heart of all the huddles on the court, a group of women who managed to find their roles and find their way through such a trying season, into a sea of confetti to celebrate a conference championship that really meant something.

They all do.

This one probably as much as any of the previous 26.

mike.anthony@hearstmediact.com; @manthonyhearst