Is UConn’s early loss a sign or a wake-up call? The Huskies’ tough schedule will be revealing

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The reality for UConn coach Geno Auriemma is that there’s no way to ignore — for any member of this program — the gap between where his team is and where it needs to be for a shot at the program’s 13th national title. The good news is that the Huskies now have the full complement of the season to figure it out.

That is the counterpart to the bad news, which was that in the second game of the Huskies’ season, in a primetime window on Fox, No. 2 UConn was taken down 77-66 by No. 5 Michigan. As it is whenever the Huskies fall to any program, it was the biggest win for coach Kim Barnes Arico in her Michigan tenure, and maybe one of the biggest of her entire career (this victory can saddle up alongside her takedown of UConn during her final season at St. John’s during the 2011-12 season). As the Michigan students stormed the court following the final buzzer Thursday night, UConn players and staff shuffled off toward the tunnel and back to the Crisler Center locker room.

The loss served as a harsh wakeup call. Auriemma acknowledged that his program spent more time prepping for this specific Michigan game than maybe any other early season contest the Huskies have played over the years because they knew the magnitude. Though the UConn standard is an established dominance known for decades, the Wolverines’ brand is newer. The Michigan of today and the Michigan of five years ago is not at all the same. Michigan isn’t even the same as last season, when the Huskies beat the Wolverines by three at a showcase in Uncasville, Conn.

Knowing all of that, UConn worked and planned and practiced. Meticulously. Deliberately.

And it didn’t show.

The Wolverines gushed about how their win was accomplished in true Michigan women’s basketball fashion. How they played the way they wanted.. Barnes Arico awards her players stickers for the intangibles that don’t show up on the box score — charges, securing 50/50 balls, forcing jump balls. That’s what the Wolverines call winning the “Michigan Way.”

1-0 https://t.co/SN68kLHwQQ

— Michigan Women’s Basketball (@umichwbball) November 6, 2026

And UConn, a team with a reputation for defense, couldn’t guard. A program known for its 3-point shooting picked a bad night to have a bad night, especially as the Wolverines went for the jugular from deep. UConn, which has had one of the best transition and fastbreak games in the country over the last decade, scored just 4 points in fastbreak offense. Even with a roster full of five-star recruits, everyone was looking around to see who would step up.

Yes, part of the problem was that Sarah Strong, the reigning national player of the year, spent most of the first half on the bench in foul trouble. When she returned in the third quarter, the Huskies seemed poised to make a run. They went to Strong early and she delivered, scoring 9 of UConn’s first 16 points of the second half.

Even as you expected UConn to go on a run, snowball its momentum and wipe out anything in its path, the Huskies didn’t. Instead, it was Michigan responding, finding stopgaps that the Huskies, alternatively, couldn’t find in the final 10 minutes.

Auriemma is left to figure out why that momentum couldn’t sustain and why the carryover from practice to the game didn’t happen, with the benefit that, after that result, no one is going to run from the truth. Said Strong: “It was all on us.”

At another program, the idea of “warts and all” in the second game of the season might not be such a welcomed sight. The notion that it creates a roadmap for all future opponents would keep some coaches up at night. Not Auriemma and his staff. No team enters the season fully formed, not even UConn. And now, thanks to Michigan, UConn can reflect honestly on what needs to change.

Because it’s UConn, everything appears under a microscope. Another program might look at an 11-point loss to a top-five team and feel grateful. UConn sees it as nothing but teachable moments (and, potentially some extremely exhausting defensive drills) coming out of this game.

“I think this is an opportunity for my players to go, ‘OK, what’s going to change on my end? … All right, how do get better from this game?’ ” Auriemma said. “That’s the coach’s job now: How do we get better from this game?”

UConn must because there’s no slowing down. The Huskies have the toughest first two weeks of the season of any team in the country, playing three top-10 opponents and a fourth top-20 team, for good measure, all before Nov. 16.

Auriemma didn’t enter this stretch thinking that losses were out of the question. He might even say he’s more grateful for this loss than the Huskies’ 65-point season opening win over Cornell because this one actually told him something about his team.

“It’s not about the loss,” Auriemma said. “It’s just disappointing to see how some of our players reacted when it was time to step up and make plays. … So, I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed more than anything in myself.”

Auriemma and the Huskies have less than five months to morph that disappointment into progress to earn a shot at the national title. That’s not nothing.

But they have less than 72 hours before their next top-10 opponent, Iowa, attempts to hand the Huskies their next rude awakening.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Connecticut Huskies, Michigan Wolverines, Women’s College Basketball

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