Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma calls out to his team in the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Creighton, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in Storrs, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
STORRS, Conn. (AP) — UConn, the most dominant program in the history of women’s college basketball, is showing some signs of vulnerability.
The 10th-ranked Huskies are just 7-3 this season and have had some of their more impressive winning streaks come to an end. A 57-44 loss to Georgia Tech last month was UConn’s first to an unranked opponent since 2012, a span of 240 games.
The Huskies also lost a pair of top-five showdowns: 73-57 to top-ranked South Carolina, a team they will see again on Jan. 27; and 69-64 to No. 3 Louisville. The latter defeat dropped UConn out of the AP top 10 for the first time since 2005 and revived the chatter over the fact that the Huskies have not won a national title since 2016 — a relative eternity for Geno Auriemma’s juggernaut even if the standards are unique and unrealistic.
Whether the UConn dynasty is truly fraying is a different question: A program that has won 11 national championships since 1995 and made 13 straight Final Four appearances in the NCAA Tournament remains unquestionably one of the best in the country.
The fractures in the armor have, for the most part, coincided with the fracture in the left knee of reigning national player of the year Paige Bueckers and the stress injury in the…
