COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Perhaps Jordan Horston was destined to be a point guard, the quarterback of a basketball team's offense.

Hortson's great uncle is the late Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Joe Gilliam, who was the first African-American quarterback to start a season opener (1974) after the AFL-NFL merger in 1970.

"I know he had a lot of adversity through his career so he's an inspiration," Horston said.

Horston, though, already has a lot of inspiration and motivation as USA Basketball's U-17 national team trials began Thursday at the United States Olympic Training Center.

UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- Moriah Jefferson has caught the Vegas Golden Knights' fever.

"I went to the game (the opener of the second-round series with the San Jose Sharks) that they won 7-0 and it was incredible," Jefferson said on Sunday. "It was the first hockey game that I had ever been to and I got into it. I know nothing. I started learning a few rules, a few penalties. It was madness."

The expansion Golden Knights advanced to the Stanley Cup finals Sunday by finishing off the Winnipeg Jets in five games of the best-of-seven Western Conference final. Jefferson's Las Vegas Aces, who are in their first season in Nevada after relocating from San Antonio, can only dream of similar success.

UNCASVILLE, Conn. - Natalie Butler had not been in Connecticut in a year.

With her receiving her bachelor's degree from the University of Connecticut followed by a record-setting season as a graduate transfer with the George Mason women's basketball team, being drafted by the WNBA's Dallas Wings, and receiving her masters in global affairs, it's been quite a year.

UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- Kia Nurse loved everything about the University of Connecticut. But after four years, she was ready move on.

The basketball part of her college career ended on March 30 when the Huskies lost to Notre Dame in the national semifinals at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. The school part concluded Saturday when the two-time academic All-American was awarded her bachelor's degree during graduation ceremonies in Storrs.

"Graduation was amazing and my parents were excited about it as well," Nurse said Monday. "For me, it was a big goal. I'm fortunate that I had the opportunity to come back for graduation and walk, but I'm really excited to get started with this."

UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- Rosemary Ragle grew up in Alabama and spent most of her professional life in Storrs, Connecticut.

And while she wouldn't trade her two years in New York City working at the Hospital for Special Surgery and serving as the athletic trainer for the WNBA's New York Liberty, when the opportunity came to return to Connecticut she couldn't pass it up.

Ragle, who was the athletic trainer for 10 national championship women's basketball teams at UConn, is back in a familiar place as the first-year athletic trainer for the Connecticut Sun.

UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- It was like old times for Morgan Tuck in Seattle last week.

The first time Tuck and Breanna Stewart played a game together was for the United States national team at the 2010 FIBA U-17 world championships. They were together again last Thursday -- along with fellow University of Connecticut alums Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Tiffany Hayes, and Stefanie Dolson -- as the USA senior national team faced China in an exhibition game at KeyArena. It was the first time Tuck and Stewart were teammates since the Huskies defeated Syracuse in the 2016 NCAA national championship game in Indianapolis.

Of course, their team won as the Americans topped China 83-46.

Tuck enters Connecticut Sun camp feeling like old self

The Jets selected UConn DT Folorunso Fatukasi with their sixth-round pick (180th overall). 

Fatukasi, who also goes by 'Foley', is a Long Island ative. In his senior season, Fatukasi 45 total tackles, 7.5 for loss with 4.0 sacks. Fatukasi recorded 14.0 sacks during his career at UConn...

Ever since he was named the new head coach at UConn on March 22, it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks for Dan Hurley.

Even as her coaching journey took her to Seattle and Chicago, Jasmine Lister never lost appreciation for the time she spent as a graduate assistant in Storrs on Geno Auriemma's staff with the University of Connecticut women's basketball team.

"I see them a lot, but I still want to tell them, 'Thank you,' " Lister said last December. "They've done a lot for me. They taught me a lot about basketball and a lot about myself as a person. They took someone in from another program, someone they didn't know, and treated me like one of their own. And even though I've been gone for a year they are still looking out for me and still make me feel like I'm a part of it."

Soon she just won't feel like a part of it, she will be a part of it. The 25-year-old Lister will be named an assistant at UConn to replace Marisa Moseley, who was introduced as the head coach at Boston University on Wednesday. An official announcement from the school could come as early as Thursday.

Marisa Moseley is getting a homecoming.

The University of Connecticut women's basketball assistant coach has been named the head coach at her alma mater Boston University, BU athletic director Drew Marrochello announced on Tuesday. Moseley becomes the eighth head coach -- and first alumna -- in program history. She will be formally introduced on Wednesday at 9 a.m. in the Francis D. Burke Club Room at Agganis Arena.

"This is a banner day for Boston University women's basketball," Marrochello said in a statement. "As we embark on a new and promising era, we are incredibly excited to welcome Marisa back to her alma mater to lead the program she played for.

The University of Connecticut women's basketball team is losing Gabby Williams and Kia Nurse to graduation and to the WNBA.

The Huskies appear to be looking at a pair potential graduate transfers from Texas A&M as immediate replacements.

Forward Anriel Howard, the Aggies' leading rebounder this past season, and guard Danni Williams, their second-leading scorer, are planning on visiting the Storrs campus this weekend, according to a pair of sources. The New Haven Register's Jim Fuller confirmed Howard's trip and added she has already visited Florida State and will tentatively travel to Mississippi State, Tennessee and a fifth school to be determined.

Gabby Williams is usually very sure of herself on the basketball court and off of it.

But Thursday was different. The University of Connecticut senior forward had no control over her future as she attended the WNBA Draft at Nike Headquarters in New York.

"I was nervous, I was anxious, I just wanted it to be here," Williams said. "You don't know what city you're going to. You don't know who your teammates are. It's a scary thing..."

Gabby Williams, Azura Stevens and Kia Nurse were all selected within the top ten picks of the 2018 WNBA Draft. Williams was picked 4th overall by the Sky, Stevens went 6th to the Wings and Nurse went 10th to the Liberty.

The trio led the Huskies to a 36-1 record and another trip to the Final Four, where they lost to Notre Dame. 

This season, Williams averaged 11.2 points, 7.4 rebounds, 5.3 assists, and 2.4 steals in her senior season and was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Albany Regional. 

Gabby Williams, Kia Nurse, and Azurá Stevens will travel to New York Thursday and attend the 2018 WNBA Draft being held at Nike Headquarters there.

Napheesa Collier's dream of cutting down the nets at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, did not come true.

Azura Stevens' playing career with the University of Connecticut women's basketball team is one and done.

Stevens, a 6-foot-6 forward from Raleigh, North Carolina, will give up her final year of college eligibility and enter the 2018 WNBA Draft, according to a source familiar with the decision and confirmed by UConn Monday afternoon. Stevens has the option to leave as she is 22 years old, and her original college class is graduating in May.

The WNBA Draft will be held April 12 at Nike Headquarters in New York City.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- From the moment it clinched its spot in the NCAA Final Four, the University of Connecticut women's basketball team promised it would be different here.

But the heartbreaking end for the Huskies was the same, almost eerily so.

All-American Arike Ogunbowale's jump shot from just inside the 3-point line with one second left in overtime Friday night gave Notre Dame a 91-89 win over UConn in a national semifinal game before a crowd of 19,564 at Nationwide Arena.

"My team trusted me to have the ball at the end," Ogunbowale said. "I mean, it felt good. I didn't know it was going in, but it felt good..."

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) Arike Ogunbowale's jumper from the corner with a second left lifted Notre Dame to a 91-89 overtime victory over UConn on Friday night in the national semifinals.

She finished with 27 points and Jackie Young had a career-high 32 to lead the Irish back to the championship game for the first time since 2015.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- There will be 19,000 fans inside Nationwide Arena and many more at home watching Napheesa Collier as she tries to help the University of Connecticut women's basketball team get past Notre Dame Friday night and earn a spot in the 2018 national championship game.

But after struggling in last year's national semifinal loss to Mississippi State, the junior forward will not be out to prove anything to anyone -- except herself.

"I never want to be timid like I was that night ever again," Collier said. "All I could think of was to not make mistakes, but then by doing that I did make mistakes. It was one of the reasons we lost. I think we were all timid and afraid to make mistakes. When that happens, you get beat..."

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gabby Williams has picked up her share of honors as a member of the University of Connecticut women's basketball team.

But the Senior CLASS Award she got on Thursday figures to find a special place in the trophy case of her Sparks, Nevada, home.

"It means a lot to me because it's something that's beyond basketball, which we don't always get recognized for," Williams said. "It's too bad it gets lost because there are so many athletes doing so many good things. Sometimes athletes struggle with showing that they're more than athletes in a world that perceives them as just athletes. They're capable of more and should be allowed to be capable of so much more. That needs to be recognized more..."

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gabby Williams' answer was short and sweet when asked if she could get the three rebounds she needs for 1,000 in her career with the University of Connecticut women's basketball team's during Friday night's NCAA Final Four semifinal game with Notre Dame at Nationwide Arena.

"I'll try," she said with a smile.

To Williams, rebounding is all about effort and there's little short or sweet about it. The only short part would be her height. If she gets the three rebounds, the 5-foot-11 All-American senior forward would become the seventh UConn player with 1,000 but, the first to be listed at under 6-feet tall.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The road has taken the University of Connecticut women's basketball team to a record 11 consecutive NCAA Final Fours, but it's a journey it's never taken for granted.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Crystal Dangerfield arrived in Storrs being thought of as the next great point guard for the University of Connecticut's women's basketball team.

She had her moments -- think Baylor in her second career game -- in an up-and-down freshman season that ended with her watching the final shot of the season in Dallas from the bench. She returned with a new confidence as a sophomore and through the first half of the regular season was as good as anyone in the country before shin splints in her left leg began limiting her practice time and in some cases her effectiveness.

But on a magic night Monday at the Times Union Center, the Murfreesboro, Tennessee, native put forth a first half that was as good as any of the Huskies' greats have played. By the time she fed Azura Stevens for a layup to close out the second-quarter scoring, UConn's berth to the NCAA Final Four was all but secured.

Dangerfield scored 19 of her 21 points in a decisive first half as the top-seeded Huskies blasted No. 2 and defending national champion South Carolina 94-65 in the NCAA Albany Regional final before an enthusiastic pro-UConn crowd of 9,522.

Crystal Dangerfield scored 19 of her 21 points in the first half, and top-seeded UConn routed No. 2 South Carolina 94-65 on Monday night to reach the Final Four for the 11th consecutive year.

The road to a 12th national championship has been paved in marshmallows thus far for Geno Auriemma and the Connecticut women's basketball team.

With one pivotal matchup on Monday, however, all that ease disappears.

The Huskies (35-0) will square off with Dawn Staley and defending national champion South Carolina (29-6) in the Albany Region final at the Times Union Center.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Katie Lou Samuelson was coming off one of the best sophomores seasons for any University of Connecticut women's basketball player and set her expectations even higher for her junior year.

But in the second quarter of the second game of the season on Nov. 17, against California at Gampel Pavilion, Samuelson fell awkwardly after collision with the Bears' Mikayla Cowling and eventually limped off the court. She would miss four games with a left foot sprain. In January she would get a black left eye against Texas and injure her left ankle versus Tulsa, which cost her another game, and led her to joke that everything happened on her left side.

As the Huntington Beach, California, native heads into Monday night's NCAA tournament Albany Regional final against South Carolina, she and the top-seeded Huskies are all right.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- History may be made Monday night, but the history between the University of Connecticut and South Carolina women's basketball teams will have nothing to do with whether it happens.

If the top-seeded Huskies can end the No. 2 Gamecocks' one-year reign as national champions in the NCAA tournament Albany Regional final at the Times Union Center, they will advance to their record 19th Final Four overall -- breaking a tie with Tennessee for most appearances -- and record 11th straight.

UConn (35-0) has beaten South Carolina the past four Februarys, including an 83-58 win at sold-out Colonial Life Arena in Columbia on Feb. 1. That was February. This is March, and this will be the first postseason meeting between the schools.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Geno Auriemma doesn't know new University of Connecticut men's basketball coach Dan Hurley all that well, but that, of course, will change when Hurley gets settled in a bit in Storrs and Auriemma and his women's team wrap up their run in the NCAA tournament.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- At the end of the first quarter Saturday, Gabby Williams grabbed a rebound and got out on the break that led to a beat-the-buzzer layup by Kia Nurse. Right before the halftime horn, the University of Connecticut women's basketball team's senior All-America hit an 18-foot jump shot.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) Napheesa Collier had 16 points and 11 rebounds to help top-seed UConn beat Duke 72-59 on Saturday and advance to the Elite Eight for the 13th consecutive season.

UConn (35-0) will face defending national champion South Carolina on Monday night in trying to reach an 11th straight Final Four.

The Huskies scored the first seven points of the game beginning with a banked-in 3-pointer from Kia Nurse and they were off and running.

Back in the Sweet 16 for the 25th consecutive season -- with a scheduled Saturday matchup against No. 5-seeded Duke, the No. 1-seeded Connecticut women's basketball team is nevertheless not looking down the line.

Even if this season they might just have reason to.

The Huskies (34-0) enter regional matchups not as defending champions, like they have in so many recent years past, but hoping to climb the mountaintop once more.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- About two dozen media members with either cameras, microphones, or tape recorders were waiting for her inside the University of Connecticut women's basketball team's locker room Friday.

Then, in walked Azura Stevens, sporting her best and biggest smile.

"Why would I dread this?" Stevens said with a laugh.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Katie Lou Samuelson's older sister, Karlie, had moved on to Stanford as she entered her junior year at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, California. It didn't take long for her to develop a family-like tie with one of the Monarchs' newcomers -- Jayda Adams.

The two will be together again Saturday but on different sidelines. Samuelson and the top-seeded University of Connecticut women's basketball face Adams and No. 5 Duke in a NCAA tournament Albany Regional semifinal at the Times Union Center.

"I love her. In high school I called her my little sister," Samuelson said. "When I was a junior, she was the only freshman on varsity. I saw her develop as a player at Mater Dei and I've watched her since she got to Duke. I'm happy for her and excited to see her."

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Napheesa Collier has 23 double-doubles in three seasons with the University of Connecticut women's basketball team, all via points and rebounds.

That number would be 24 to match her uniform if not for a mistake by the stat crew at Gampel Pavilion during last Saturday's NCAA tournament first-round game with Saint Francis of Pennsylvania. In the opening minute of the third quarter, Collier passed the ball out to Katie Lou Samuelson, who connected on a 3-pointer. Gabby Williams, however, was credited with the assist. Collier would finish the game with a career high nine assists, three better than her previous best.

"That's interesting," Collier said. "But I really don't care."

The Univeristy of Connecticut has found their new men's basketball head coach in Dan Hurley, the team announced Thursday. 

Hurley, the son of legendary high school basketball coach Bob Hurley, began his collegiate coaching experience at Wagner College in 2010. He spent two seasons there, turning the program around from a 13-17 team during the 2010-11 season to a 25-6 team the year after. 

He would transition to the University of Rhode Island in 2012, where he has spent the last six years. He owns a 113-82 record at URI, while also bringing his team to the NCAA Tournament the past two seasons. The Rams recently lost to Duke University in the second round of this year's tournament. 

STORRS, Conn. -- As soon as Azura Stevens saw the final score from Athens, Georgia, the University of Connecticut women's basketball team's redshirt junior forward knew what the first question to her would be when the media made its way inside the Huskies' locker room Monday night.

How about playing Duke next?

"They're a good team and it's going to be a good game," said Stevens, who spent her first two seasons with the Blue Devils before transferring to UConn in 2016. "We're going to be looking forward to it."

STORRS, Conn. -- Katie Lou Samuelson turned toward a television in the University of Connecticut women's basketball team's locker room Monday night to see the final moments of Central Michigan's upset of Ohio State, which followed minutes after Buffalo's upset of Florida State.

"The biggest thing, especially on the women's side, is understanding that you have to be ready to play no matter what," Samuelson said. "When you watch a team like a Buffalo or Central Michigan do what they did, they were probably underestimated by someone and they were good enough to take advantage of that. It's just a warning you have to be ready no matter what because neither Florida State or Ohio State came out and expected them to play the way they did. Anything can happen on any day."

The top-seeded Huskies were a prohibitive favorite heading into their NCAA tournament second-round game with No. 9 Quinnipiac, but knew there were no guarantees. They played like their season was on the line, which, of course, it was.

Napheesa Collier scored 23 points and top-seeded UConn beat in-state neighbor Quinnipiac 71-46 on Monday night to advance to a 25th straight Sweet 16.

Azura Stevens added 14 points and Kia Nurse chipped in with 13 for the Huskies (34-0), who found themselves in a much slower-paced game than their 140-52 first-round rout of Saint Francis (Pa.).

But Connecticut was not threatened in this one either. They opened with a 9-2 run and never trailed.

The University of Connecticut has reached out to Dan Hurley about their vacant men's basketball head coaching job, though no decision is imminent, reports Adam Zagoria.

Pittsburgh has also reached out to Hurley, according to Zagoria.

Hurley, 46, led the University of Rhode Island to the second round of the NCAA tournament the past two seasons. The seventh-seeded Rams lost to Duke on Saturday after beating 10th-seeded Oklahoma on Thursday.

Twenty years after their only matchup, No. 1 seed Connecticut will play Quinnipiac on Monday in the second round of the NCAA Women's Tournament at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn.

Though the schools are located some 55 miles from each other, they might as well be a million miles apart in expectations.

At least they were in 1998, when the Huskies scored the biggest win in program history over the Bobcats 117-20 >> Read more

Geno Auriemma knows what it's like to build a program from the bottom up. The University of Connecticut women's basketball team had one winning season before his arrival in Storrs in 1985. Today, Auriemma has the highest winning percentage for a coach in NCAA history and the 11-time national champion Huskies are second all-time to Tennessee in wins.

He's also watched Quinnipiac coach Tricia Fabbri build her program from Division II into a nationally-known Division I club, and that included her team hitting rock bottom.

When No. 1 UConn entertains the ninth-seeded Bobcats on Monday in an NCAA tournament Albany (New York) Regional second-round game at Gampel Pavilion, it will be their first postseason meeting and second overall. On Dec. 27, 1998, the Huskies routed Quinnipiac -- which was in its first season in Division I -- 117-20. Auriemma had four players on his roster that would go on to play in the Olympics. Fabbri had players that were originally recruited to play against the likes of LeMoyne, Stonehill, American International and Merrimack.

STORRS, Conn.-- Crystal Dangerfield jogged to the bench at the end of the first quarter of the University of Connecticut women's basketball team's NCAA tournament opener Saturday and glanced at the scoreboard.

"I thought it was halftime already," Dangerfield said.

No, the Huskies' record-setting onslaught would continue for another 30 minutes...