{"id":534677,"date":"2026-03-13T23:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T23:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/534677\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T23:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T23:11:13","slug":"gus-johnson-claims-uconn-women-could-win-wnba-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/534677\/","title":{"rendered":"Gus Johnson claims UConn women could win WNBA championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UConn women\u2019s basketball<\/a> team is the clear favorite to win the 2026 NCAA championship, but FOX Sports commentator Gus Johnson<\/a> made perhaps an outlandish claim that the program\u2019s dominance could go beyond the college level.<\/p>\n

While calling the UConn men\u2019s 93-68 win over Xavier<\/a> in the Big East Tournament<\/a> quarterfinals on Thursday, Johnson argued that the undefeated No. 1 UConn women could be a playoff team if their roster competed in the WNBA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe University of Connecticut is literally the cradle for champions with the men and the women,\u201d Johnson said during the broadcast. \u201cThe women\u2019s, it\u2019s not even fair. They should put that women\u2019s team in the WNBA, and I bet you they\u2019d go to the playoffs. They might even win it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the statement is clearly absurd, the Huskies do have multiple players on their current roster who will be WNBA players in the future. Star guard Azzi Fudd<\/a> is a projected lottery pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft, and coach Geno Auriemma joked after his team won the women\u2019s Big East Tournament<\/a> that sophomore phenom Sarah Strong<\/a> could have been a first-round pick in last year\u2019s draft if she was eligible to declare after her spectacular freshman season.<\/p>\n

But though the Huskies are headed into the NCAA Tournament unbeaten looking to win back-to-back national titles, Auriemma doesn\u2019t even believe that this year\u2019s team is better than last year\u2019s, much less better than a roster of seasoned professionals in the WNBA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that you take one of the top five players in the WNBA off your team and say you\u2019re better. I don\u2019t know how I can justify saying that,\u201d Auriemma said at the end of the regular season referring to former Huskies star Paige Bueckers<\/a>, the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft. \u201cThere are a lot of times when I watch us play and I say, that wouldn\u2019t have happened if we had Paige \u2026 We\u2019re a much different team than we were last year, correct. But to say that we\u2019re a better team than we were last year? I don\u2019t buy that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is unbeaten UConn women\u2019s basketball better than 2025 title team? Geno Auriemma doesn\u2019t think so<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UConn women\u2019s basketball team is the clear favorite to win the 2026 NCAA championship, but FOX Sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[28454,209326,49,48,547,4785,4784,36805,156669,209325,57165,884,135340,4658,46241,82,1304,209327,182657,630,4501],"class_list":{"0":"post-534677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-azzi-fudd","9":"tag-big-east-tournament","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-college-basketball","13":"tag-connecticut","14":"tag-ct-news","15":"tag-fox-sports","16":"tag-geno-auriemma","17":"tag-gus-johnson","18":"tag-hartford-courant","19":"tag-local-news","20":"tag-ncaa-tournament","21":"tag-paige-bueckers","22":"tag-sarah-strong","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-uconn-huskies","25":"tag-uconn-mens-basketball","26":"tag-uconn-womens-basketball","27":"tag-wnba","28":"tag-womens-basketball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}