NEW YORK — Let the new kid break in easy. Don’t overdo the hype. Tamp down expectations.
That’s conventional thinking as highly anticipated college careers begin, but Sarah Strong isn’t your conventional freshie. The understated approach doesn’t apply.
“Jamelle (Elliott) watched her play in this back gym where no one was watching, and she came back and said, ‘I saw this ninth-grade kid who’s going to be really, really good,” Geno Auriemma was telling the multitude of reporters around him Wednesday at Big East Media Day. “So I went down there (to North Carolina) right away and all you saw was this young kid who had a knack for doing the things that people have to learn to do. She already had them: how she saw the floor, how she finished around the basket. That non-rushed, casual approach to the game all the great players have, to be able to slow the game down.
“And it became, for me, ‘if we get Sarah to come into our program, she will significantly change the trajectory of our program.”
The italics are mine, because UConn has won 11 national championships in women’s basketball, has been to the Final Four 15 of the last 16 programs. Change the trajectory?
“When you say that, it’s not like we’ve been losing all the time and this is going to change,” Auriemma said. “Not that kind of trajectory. I mean, for the last couple of years, for whatever reason, you’re this far (inches) away. So a player like that could help you close that gap. That’s a four-year closing of the gap. This is an opportunity to close that gap for four years in a row, and keep it closed.”
Since Rebecca Lobo moved the needle to national championship level 30 years ago, UConn has been a dream destination for game-changers, top-rated recruits, gap-closers. UConn, ranked No. 2 in the AP poll, brought four to Madison Square Garden, Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Ashlynn Shade and the newest. Sarah Strong, 6 feet 2, serious, succinct, is well-versed in the lineage of Huskies greats but, at 18, admits she barely remembers the last time UConn won the championship in 2016, when the gap to which Auriemma refers was opened by the deeper competition across the country in the sport.
“It means a lot, just being able to say I played where Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart played,” Strong said. “Players like that, it’s pretty cool.”
Strong was the preseason pick for Big East Freshman of the Year, and there was no effort to shield her from the spotlight, photo ops, and interviews at The Garden. This is what it’s going to be like from now on, and Strong seemed to get more comfortable as the day wore on. “Sarah’s very, like, chill,” Fudd said. “She doesn’t show a lot of emotion, and I think that’s honestly better for these kind of situations. She’s very level.”
With the overlap in superstars, Bueckers will command the spotlight in her fifth and, presumably, final year at UConn. Fudd, once she completes recovery from her knee surgery, will join her and, fingers crossed, we will finally get to see them play together. With Aaliyah Edwards gone to the WNBA, UConn will rely largely on unproven talent, Jana El-Alfy, coming back from her Achilles injury, and Strong for all-important frontcourt play. With her all-around game, 21.0 points, 16.8 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 2.8 steals per game in high school, Strong could be that missing piece if the program can enjoy better luck in avoiding injuries.
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“She knows how to play the game, that’s the biggest thing about her,” Bueckers said. “She can pass, she can score at all three levels. You can tell she has grown up around the game, has played it a whole bunch and she loves it. But I feel like the biggest compliment as a basketball player is that she knows how to play, has a high IQ. I don’t think there is anything on the court she can’t do.”
As Bueckers spoke, Strong lurked behind the crowd with a camera, ready to ask her own question. When would “Little Paigey” make an appearance?
“And she’s a jokester, we’ve learned that, too,” Bueckers said.
Once Auriemma, 70, set his sights on Strong, McDonald’s All-American, Naismith high school player of the year, three-time state champion and ESPN’s top-ranked recruit in the Class of ’24, he went after her with all his old tenacity. Strong’s father, Danny, played for NC State, her mother, Allison Feaster, for Harvard, and both played overseas — Sarah spent much of her childhood in Spain — so she was a natural and has the best of advisors around her. When Strong went to Columbia, S.C., to watch South Carolina and UConn play before a sellout crowd last February, an injury-riddled UConn team was overmatched, 83-65. Strong was close to making her decision, but her head wasn’t turned by the final score and the fixed moment in time.
“(UConn) just wasn’t healthy, it was kind of rough,” Strong said. “But they did what they could. If they had all their players it would have been a different game.”
She committed to UConn on April 6, the day after the Huskies lost by two points to Iowa in the national semifinal, to begin making it a different game. Strong spent much of the summer with USA Basketball, helping win the FIBA under-18 AmeriCup. She’s played on World Cup champs in the 3-on-3 game.
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“My only goal is to get better and just grow,” she said. “Definitely win the championship, too.”
Strong and her parents have agreed they will be there when she needs them, but not hold her hand. Everything that has been put on her shoulders, everything she has earned, is hers to navigate. Since getting on campus late in the summer, Strong has gradually gotten comfortable with her new surroundings, her many decorated new teammates, her confidence growing quickly, her personality emerging. During the First Night scrimmage, after Bueckers hit a 3-pointer from the logo, Strong headed to the other end of the floor and matched “Little Paigey” for distance and accuracy.
“Sarah, off the court, is very introverted, very shy, very studious,” Auriemma said. “She wants to know, she wants to be sure, she’s very cautious. She started out being the same on the court. Then, the last two weeks, she has been more the basketball player that got her all those awards. I can honestly say, she’s as impressive as any freshman we’ve had in a long, long time. Every day, she doesn’t something I haven’t seen before from her.”
