Behold The Metamorphosis Of Breanna Stewart

Geno Auriemma Predicted This Moment Was Coming



"Right away, from the Big East tournament, I saw a change in Breanna Stewart," Auriemma said. "She was involved, not drifting away and hiding. She was more worried about failing than succeeding before. It has turned in her head, and she's in a really good place right now."

By the time he was ready to step onto the plane to New Orleans for the Final Four, Auriemma was also ready to joke about her freakish talent.

"God played a huge trick on everybody else in college basketball when he created [Stewart]," he said. "Breanna walks out on the court and I can sense people are thinking, 'This is the best athlete in college basketball by far? Really, that's got to be an April Fools' joke.'"

A little like Gumby, a lot like the most brilliant burgeoning talent in America, the 6-4 Stewart poured in a career-high 29 points on 10-for-16 shooting as she made sure there would be no last-minute failure this time against Notre Dame. UConn wiped out the Irish 83-65 Sunday night inside the New Orleans Arena.

As she put her hands about two inches from Auriemma's hair, fake massaging the most famous coiffure in women's basketball at the postgame news conference, Stewie, the simultaneously intense and goofball freshman, had shown America this was no joke at all.

"Stewie probably puts as much pressure on herself as any kid I've ever coached," Auriemma said to ESPN after the game. "My God, she was amazing tonight."

Later, he would say, "She has gotten stronger mentally. She has gotten stronger emotionally. Stewie really takes things to heart. When she wasn't playing well, it got into her pretty severely. She let it affect her. She wasn't strong enough to put it aside."

Midway through the season, Stewart wasn't ready to take on the best teams. She was most outstanding player in the Bridgeport Regional. She's on her way to dominating the Final Four. By the end, the best teams weren't ready to take on Stewart.

"After the end of the regular season, there was a renewed, almost I'm not going to settle for this anymore," Auriemma said. "That's kind of a rare for an 18-year-old."

"This postseason, I've gained a lot more confidence," said Stewart, who said her bruised right shoulder is fine. "I'm not sure I just woke up and started feeling better about my game. I think getting into the gym with [Chris Dailey] helped my confidence, and I put it over into the game. And, yeah, Coach had a little bit to do with it."

She couldn't help but tease the Hall of Fame coach.

Suddenly, Auriemma goes from losing seven of eight to Notre Dame to going from his seventh to potentially eighth national championship.

Suddenly, he goes from having to explain how Notre Dame keeps knocking him off the summit to how it would feel to tie Pat Summit for most NCAA titles.

Suddenly, with a young group of brilliant players, heck, he could be looking at tying John Wooden's 10 national championships by 2015.

He says he doesn't worry about stuff like that and, right now, in the midst of battle, he doesn't. His focus has been pure and razor-sharp. He knew what was on the line. He knew what mattered.

"If we would have won those other three to Notre Dame this season and lost this one, those other three would mean nothing," Auriemma had said Saturday. "We've already been in that situation [in 2010-2011]. Not winning the previous three and we win tomorrow, you don't remember the other three. I guess the short answer is what happened in those other three doesn't mean anything."

Notre Dame would agree today. Skylar Diggins, who finished her college career with three straight Final Fours and no national championship, definitely would agree.

Diggins and Kayla McBride combined for 1-for-14 shooting in the first half. UConn took a 10-point lead into the locker room. The Huskies never wanted it to come down to one possession. Diggins and McBride dissolved on the court in the first half. They both dissolved into tears in the postgame news conference.

In winning seven of eight, Notre Dame had beaten the Huskies in back-to-back Final Four games and all three times this season. As it has been pointed out repeatedly, UConn had led in the second half of all seven of those losses. They were ahead or tied in the final minute of regulation in five of the seven, including the games this season.

It's understandable if Auriemma seemed a little preoccupied with the possibilities of a last-minute, one-possession game.

"If there is one timeout and we come out of a timeout and we need one possession to score, we WILL score," Auriemma had said Saturday.

It never came down to it.

"We've come a long way. I couldn't be prouder," Auriemma said. "Notre Dame is a great team. You don't beat us seven out of eight times without being a great team. But tonight was our night."

So now it's Louisville for the national championship. The hard truth of the matter is UConn beat Louisville 72-58 at the XL Center on Jan. 15. Notre Dame had beaten Louisville 93-64 on Feb. 15 at South Bend and 83-59 in the Big East Tournament at the XL Center. There is an awfully strong temptation to write this next sentence: This game had been the real national championship, and congratulations Louisville for being the NCAA runner-up.

Those are exactly the kind of expectations that wear on Auriemma, of course. He said Saturday the Final Four is great, but the road to it has gotten more and more wearing. To have a freshman fight through the funk of a midseason, to watch her develop into a dominant player, however, it has to be uplifting to a coach and teammates on so many levels.

"To see this team just totally transform, especially the young guys, it's not easy to do," senior Kelly Faris said. "The fact that [Stewart] comes in and plays her heart out, 29 points, you don't see many freshmen do that.

"This is what we knew was in her. This is what we saw from the beginning of the year. Everybody goes through their little lapses, issues. This is what we wanted to get back to, this is how she plays basketball. You guys are just starting to get a glimpse of what we knew she had."

Back in October, flush with the anticipation of her career, Auriemma produced the name of George Gervin when asked for a comparison.

"She's just a weirdo. She has a weird body type," Auriemma said at the time. "Somebody made a comment at practice that you can't speed her up. She plays at her pace. She never gets rushed. I remember Gervin like that. He was really long. She's stronger than she looks, too.

"I heard a story once about Oscar Robertson. The coach was yelling at him to go harder and quicker. He said, 'I don't do anything fast.' Breanna has a pace and it's hers that allows her to get her shots off. Everything has a nice flow to it."

That pace that she set was more than just the play on the court. It was her adjustment to college and the college game, and on Sunday night, we could just sit back and behold what she had become.

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