Nashville, Tenn. - In the beginning, UConn didn't have the national championships or reputation that it does now. It was a school in a quiet part of the state with a losing women's basketball program.

UConn also had the label no college wants: "safety school."

"My parents gave me that," former UConn star and current ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo said. "My mom (RuthAnn) was a high school guidance counselor in Connecticut (Granby Memorial Middle School). She did not want me to go to UConn. 'That's a safety school. You do not want to go there. Why would you want to go there? You can go to Stanford. You can go to Notre Dame. You can have these great diplomas when you graduate.'"

It's easy to forget that Storrs once wasn't the basketball Camelot that it is today. Before the Huskies muscled their way into the basketball elite and earned eight national championships, they had four straight nine-win seasons from 1981-85.

Geno Auriemma didn't have success or a state-of-the-art facility or swag to use when he and assistant Chris Dailey tried to woo recruits to Storrs. Instead, They wisely picked their spots.

"From an area of, say, Boston to Pittsburgh to Washington D.C., we had tried to identify in that area who are the best players that are not going to be recruited by the best schools in basketball," Auriemma said. "Who were (the recruits) the next level down. Maybe two levels down. Let's go recruit those guys and convince them that they can come here and be part of something. And a bunch of them bought it.

"We coached them pretty good. They got a little bit better. We started winning a couple of games, and then we started getting a little better player."

Auriemma and Dailey also had something else in their recruiting arsenal: their personalities.

"When you're recruited by him and get to know him and Chris Dailey, because she's a really big part of the recruiting process, you want to play for him and you want to play for her because it's different," Lobo said. "You just feel like you can become the player you want to become if you go there. And it's that simple. It's relationships.

"He develops great relationships with these kids by being honest with them, and they see the success, and you want to play for him. And then, when you get there, you no longer want to play for him, but you fight through that and you end up being a better player than you ever thought you could be."

Auriemma's first year was the only losing season. The first national championship came in his 10th season (1995). The Huskies have won seven of the last 14 national championships.

"(We had a game) at Holy Cross," Dailey said. "Sold out with all these students. They had some great signs, and one of them said, 'UConn was my safety school.'

"Swin Cash came up to me and she said, 'CD, what's a safety school?' because to her, she didn't have a safety schools.

"Now, 20 years later, 15 years later, we're nobody's safety school."

Award winners

UConn's Breanna Stewart was named the Associated Press Player of the Year on Saturday and was a member of the 10-player Women's Basketball Coaches Association All-America team.

Stewart joined teammates Stefanie Dolson and Bria Hartley as well as Notre Dame's Kayla McBride and Jewell Loyd, Tiffany Mitchell of South Carolina, Baylor's Odyssey Sims, Stanford's Chiney Ogwumike, Alyssa Thomas of Maryland and Jordan Hooper of Nebraska.

"There are a lot of other people who could be up here," Stewart said, deflecting the credit to her teammates, coaches and family."

Notre Dame's Muffet McGraw was named the AP Coach of the Year.

Quote-worthy

• "If I were the Connecticut Sun, I'd take Chiney Ogwumike with the first pick. … You won't find a bigger fan of her than me. I think she's phenomenal. She is about as complete of a person and player that college basketball has seen." - ESPN analyst and former Sun guard Kara Lawson, who was recently traded to Washington.

• "(Notre Dame's Kayla) McBride is the "third best player in the WNBA draft," behind Ogwumike and Sims. - Lawson

• "I'd make Chiney (Ogwumike) president and Stefanie (Dolson) my lifetime party planner." - ESPN's Doris Burke.

• "It used to be called, 'Store.' That was Lou Holtz's great line. (Storrs) used to be called 'Store.' Then they opened another one. Now it's called 'Storrs'." - Auriemma.

• "It's who all she plays with. By herself out there, she would be another 6-4 kid with some versatility. But she plays with Dolson who allows her to play 4. She plays with (Kaleena Mosqueda) Lewis who forces you to spread the floor. Or she plays with (Moriah) Jefferson who gets steals and creates for her. So she's a very talented player. But the story of Connecticut is not just one player. - Tara VanDerveer on Breanna Stewart.

News and notes

ESPN announced Saturday that next season's Notre Dame-UConn game would be part of the Jimmy V Classic from Purcell Pavilion in South Bend. The date of the game is Dec. 6. Asked if it would be difficult to maintain that series given Auriemma's comments about Notre Dame, Lobo grinned and said, "He's making it more entertaining. If you have a sense of humor, you'd say this is adding fuel to the fire, and Muffet (McGraw) doesn't back down. She throws her stuff out, too, which I like. You want them to both be bobbing-and-weaving and throwing their stuff out there and getting more fans interested in watching." ... Maryland coach Brenda Frese called Notre Dame's Loyd and McBride the "best one-two punch in the country." … Jack Darras of Quaker Hill ran the annual Kay Yow 5K on the streets of Nashville with daughter Jayne and son Jake. Their mom, Sarah Darras, is the Director of Administration for women's basketball at UConn.