When Jennifer Rizzotti arrived at UConn as a player in 1992, the expectations around the school, as well as the women’s basketball landscape, were much different than they are today.<\/p>\n
Geno Auriemma was only in his eighth season coaching the Huskies. UConn hadn’t yet hoisted a national championship trophy. There wasn’t nearly the same pressure to win that the Huskies face now. And women’s basketball as a whole hadn’t seen the unprecedented growth in sponsorships and popularity it is experiencing now.<\/p>\n
By the 1994-95 season, Rizzotti and fellow UConn standout Rebecca Lobo helped the Huskies go undefeated en route to their first national title. Everything about the program changed, and even as women’s basketball has evolved and skyrocketed in exposure, the Huskies have remained the gold standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no thought that we were going to be undefeated,\u201d Rizzotti said. \u201cWe didn’t have that internal pressure. We didn’t have external pressure. That’s the last time a UConn team could play that way. Think about that: 1995 is the last time a UConn team could play without that kind of pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Huskies have since won 12 national titles, reached the Final Four 25 times and won 30 conference titles. They’ve been ranked 653 weeks in The Associated Press women’s basketball poll, and Auriemma is the winningest coach in women’s college basketball history.<\/p>\n
As conversations around the Final Four in Phoenix center around how the women’s game has grown, the Huskies, who are competing for the second straight national title, have been at the forefront. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou could tell that everything was aligned for this program to reach that pinnacle,” said Rizzotti, who is currently the president of the WNBA\u2019s Connecticut Sun. \u201cI don’t think anything of us would have predicted that it would have gone on as it had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rizzotti joined former UConn players Stefanie Dolson, currently with the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, and Shea Ralph, now Vanderbilt’s coach, on a panel Friday at \u201cThe AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience,\u201d which is being held at Arizona State\u2019s First Amendment Forum in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. <\/p>\n
Earlier Friday, Big East commissioner Val Ackerman, former Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) commissioner Rich Ensor and AP women\u2019s poll founder Mel Greenberg spoke on a panel moderated by college basketball analyst Debbie Antonelli on the growth of women’s basketball at the college and pro levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think women’s basketball has never been more popular,\u201d said Ackerman, who was the first president of the WNBA from 1996-2005. \u201cI think schools that are succeeding are really seeing, feeling and believing in the (return on investment). And UConn’s a case in point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ackerman sees the investment that the schools in this year’s Final Four \u2014 UConn, Texas, South Carolina, and UCLA \u2014 have made in their programs to reach back-to-back national semifinals as a reflection of the growing importance of pouring resources into women’s hoops.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that’s done a world of good,\u201d she added. \u201cPrograms like South Carolina, UCLA, you see what they’re doing for their campuses. The investment is paying off in terms of the brand and engagement with the community and school reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as women’s sports are drawing record crowds and WNBA players are set to make more money than ever, Ensor sees much more room to capitalize on this current growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been about breaking down barriers, and they still exist,\u201d Ensor said. \u201cWe marvel at what’s happened, but we still recognize there’s a lot more that’s to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience: https:\/\/apnews.com\/https:\/apnews.com\/projects\/arizona-state-fan-poll-experience\/<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jennifer Rizzotti arrived at UConn as a player in 1992, the expectations around the school, as well…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,15857,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-563309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-uconn","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}