Is Elite Eight hardest game to win for UConn?

Kingston, R.I. - All the numbers they've amassed, from championships to winning streaks to margins of victory, suggest the UConn women operate in sports fantasia, virtually unfathomable to the rest of the unwashed who actually lose games occasionally.

And yet it has been tonight's circumstances - one win away from paradise - that has rendered the Huskies almost human in the past.

In the last 19 years, the Huskies have lost 11 games in the NCAA tournament. Five of them have come in the regional final. And while other programs would carve statues to the players and coaches responsible for an 11-5 record in the Elite Eight since 1994, the five losses support what UConn coach Geno Auriemma says every year at this time:

This is the hardest game of the tournament to win.

And whether the Huskies advance to Denver and the program's fifth straight Final Four hinges on how well they play tonight against second-seeded Kentucky in the Kingston Regional final at the Ryan Center (7 p.m., ESPN).

"Coaches and kids talk about the Final Four. The thing in their mind is the Final Four. That one game means your 40 minutes away from the Final Four, it's a bitch," Auriemma said. "That's when it starts to hit the kids that this is it. You don't know how kids will react in that situation. Some rise to the occasion and own the moment some are beaten down by the pressure of it.

"(Tonight) somebody needs to step up and be big for us. Starting (today) and whatever happens beyond that, if were fortunate enough this is when somebody or somebodies really need to step it up and make it happen. That's why it's so hard."

But if, by Auriemma's admission, it'll be hard for the Huskies, what of Kentucky, having to play through the Connecticut mystique?

"Anybody who says (the mystique) doesn't exist is living in la-la land," Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell said. "You are silly to act like it's just another game and tell your kids that it's just another game. It's not another game.

"I think you embrace that and you say 'listen, they've earned that but we've also set a goal at the beginning of the season. Outside our locker room there's a picture of the Final Four logo in Denver. We didn't put an Elite 8 goal on our season, we put a Final Four goal and the kids have worked really, really hard to get into this position.

"We're not playing all of the Connecticut teams of the past, we're playing these players."

UConn fans should be plenty familiar with the Wildcats, who have former UConn forward Samarie Walker and former Norwich Free Academy great and 2010 Gatorade Player of the Year Kastine Evans, among others.

Kentucky advanced here surviving a 34-turnover game earlier in the tournament.

"You watch them play and you see these wild swings in what they do and I think that's part of what they generate out on the court. They beat Tennessee by one and then lose by 100," Auriemma said. "You go, 'what?' Their style of play, if you're not careful, gets you into such a crazy way of playing that they're a lot better at that than you are. So, if you don't control the tempo and you don't take control of the basketball game - and keep control of it - I think they get you exactly where they want you."

m.dimauro@theday.com