STORRS, Conn. -- Azzi Fudd stood on the outskirts of the court at Gampel Pavilion. She didn't don a jersey or her trademark braids, instead wearing street clothes and clutching a bouquet of flowers for her induction Sunday into the Huskies of Honor, held minutes before UConn took on Iowa in a top-10 showdown.
Fudd's former teammates formed a tunnel for her to pass through, cheering as she walked toward halfcourt. Geno Auriemma greeted Fudd with a hug and presented her with a ceremonial jacket.
"It was like a reminder of how lucky we were and how good we had it," the coach said that day of Fudd's weekend visit. "Sometimes we took it for granted."
The 2026-27 season is Auriemma's first in seven years without Fudd or fellow backcourt star Paige Bueckers, back-to-back No. 1 recruits and eventual No. 1 WNBA draft picks who guided the Huskies to the 2025 national championship and defined UConn women's basketball this decade.
The Huskies have plenty left in the coffers, including 10 returners from last year's team that went undefeated before stumbling in the Final Four to South Carolina. Sarah Strong, the reigning national player of the year, headlines the group -- which was ranked No. 2 entering the season -- and has the potential to be even better than Bueckers and Fudd.
But the outlook for UConn -- and what it can be by the time the calendar flips to March -- might be murkier than years past. Their 3-1 start features a 77-66 loss to then-No. 5 Michigan in Ann Arbor on Nov. 5 that was so uncharacteristic Auriemma deemed it the "worst UConn performance" in over 20 years.
The Huskies don't have much time to crystallize their new identity. Between now and January, they play nine top-25 and six top-10 opponents, including No. 1 South Carolina (Nov. 24), No. 5 Duke (Nov. 28) and No. 9 LSU (Dec. 20). If rankings hold, that would be the most top-25 and top-10 games for a team before the new year in the NCAA era.
"Maybe just as it played out, we need more time," Auriemma said. "But we don't have time because we're playing teams that can beat us."
"We've got to find ourselves a little bit."
THE PRIMARY EMOTION Auriemma felt in the wake of UConn's loss to the Wolverines -- the highest-ranked win in their program history, prompting Michigan students to storm the court -- was disappointment.
Not because of the result -- UConn's tough nonconference schedule made going undefeated, something Auriemma has done six times, implausible. Sitting in the postgame news conference with his arms crossed, the coach bemoaned how his team was unable to turn things around when it started to struggle or to respond when it was time to make game-winning plays.
The Huskies might have looked ahead of schedule with their 83-61 exhibition win over current No. 6 Texas in October, a game that didn't count but was competitively played by both sides. But the Michigan game showed that they still have a ways to go.
"We found out right away some of the things we have to address," Auriemma said.
This group came back from Ann Arbor with "a lot of 'I have to be better,'" Auriemma said, including several player-led conversations. "But all these things are things that you have to be intentional about."
"That UConn team that was playing out there is not what we want to be this whole entire season," senior point guard KK Arnold said on Saturday. "We're way better than that, what we portrayed individually and as a team."
Perhaps no one was harder on themselves than Strong. Expectations were sky-high for her entering her junior year after she spent the summer recovering from a nagging Achilles injury and worked this preseason on improving her vocal leadership.
But in the Huskies' first real test of the season, she faltered. Strong picked up three first-quarter fouls, relegating her to the bench for the final 12 minutes of the half, and finished with 13 points on the night. Strong later lamented how she "messed up in every aspect of the Michigan game" and "didn't show up at all."
Iowa served as a bounce-back opportunity. She practically shot the ball every time she got a touch, and her 39 points (on 26 shots, both career highs) were the most by any UConn player against a top-10 team in program history.
No longer a sidekick to Bueckers or Fudd, Strong is, as Auriemma put it, "under a tremendous amount of pressure to have to be everything to this team." In October he compared what Strong is facing to what Diana Taurasi experienced her junior year following the graduations of Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams.
He remembers Taurasi showing up the first week of practice that 2002-03 season with a determination to prove she was the best player in the country. Auriemma hopes he can coax a similar edge out of Strong this season.
"Every one of us, I think, probably needs a reminder, needs a little nudge, that it doesn't happen by itself," Auriemma said. "You have to actively engage like that, and you have to create that mentality for yourself, and she has it. She has it in her. Getting it out of her every day is going to be the challenge for our coaching staff, is how do we put her in positions where that has to come out?"
While the bulk of the responsibility falls on Strong, she won't have to do it alone. Sophomore Blanca Quinonez could be the next Huskies great. The Ecuadorian forward didn't play basketball over the summer as she rehabbed from an offseason shoulder surgery and showed some rust early this season. But she averaged 10.7 points per game as a freshman and was the Huskies' second-leading scorer in the NCAA tournament (15.2 PPG).
Jovana Popovic might be UConn's most intriguing player. A freshman guard from Serbia, she led the Huskies in scoring against Michigan (25 points) and is their No. 2 scorer so far (14.0 PPG).
During summer workouts the coaching staff threw a lot of defensive pressure and physicality at Popovic to make her uncomfortable, but she proved to be "unflappable," Auriema said, "and little by little, the coaches, we looked at each other and we went, 'She's got to be on the court a lot.'
"She responded the way she responds to everything, [with] just like this icy stare," Auriemma said after Popovic dropped 22 points and 5 assists versus Texas. "She has a steely personality and doesn't really bend or break most of the time."
UConn's depth was supposed to be a strength entering the season. Arnold, a senior point guard, will need to take a big step in her consistency and leadership, regularly setting the tone defensively and staying aggressive offensively. Freshman Olivia Vukosa, the No. 2 recruit of her class, gives the Huskies size at 6-foot-5 and a rebounding prowess inside, though they'll want her to produce more offensively too. She had a breakout game against No. 17 Ohio State on Thursday (8 points, 12 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 blocks) and earned a start in the second half.
Players outside of Strong, Popovic, Quiñonez and Arnold accounted for just 68 points through UConn's first three games -- "We need our other players to join the band here," Auriemma said after the Michigan loss. But the supporting cast took a step in the right direction against Ohio State, when six players not including Strong, Popovic and Quiñonez had at least six points.
TWELVE YEARS AGO, a Huskies team with high expectations also lost its second game of the season on the road to a top-10 team, when UConn, then the two-time defending national champions, fell to then-No. 6 Stanford in overtime at Maples Pavilion.
"We lost and those guys were pissed," Auriemma recalled Saturday. "And we won 111 in a row after that game.
"Now, I've also seen it go the other way: You lose, and everybody starts feeling sorry for themselves, and then it affects them the next game and the next game."
No one expects this year's team to replicate what Breanna Stewart and Co. did over a decade ago. But so far, the Huskies have responded well since the Michigan loss, with wins over ranked Iowa -- in which they led by as many as 27 -- and Ohio State -- where following a rocky start they outscored the Buckeyes 49-20 after halftime.
Auriemma is rarely satiated, though, and will undoubtedly be keeping an eye on how UConn improves defensively after saying his team broke down on that end of the floor against the Wolverines. The Huskies' defense has been an oftentimes underappreciated hallmark of their dynastic run, but they allowed over 70 points against Michigan and Iowa after not allowing any opponent to reach that mark last year.
Greater tests await. First at No. 7 Louisville on Sunday (5:30 p.m. ET, ESPN). Then South Carolina and Duke in two weeks.
But Auriemma is hoping Strong and the rest of this young team going through the fire early will be exactly what the Huskies need to make it back to Columbus this spring.
"We could be a really good team and be 0-4 in the next four games, and we could be 4-0," Auriemma said. "But we could be a really, really good team and come out of there 2-2 or any combination of those. It's a good way to find out about your team."