On a Mission for Perfection

ST. LOUIS, April 6 -- Kaili McLaren was a huge Diana Taurasi fan when she was younger, and she loved watching the great Connecticut teams that Taurasi led to three straight national championships. There was something about the way those Huskies played, the way they enjoyed themselves on the court, shared the basketball and won games. McLaren, now a junior forward with Connecticut, couldn't take her eyes off them.

"Watching them play and watching the rest of the country play, there was something different about them," said McLaren, who was a two-time All-Met at Good Counsel. "There was something about those teams that made you want to watch them. It's kind of like us this year."

Indeed, Connecticut's performance this year has been riveting: The Huskies are 38-0 and will face Big East rival Louisville (34-4) in the national final Tuesday night at Scottrade Center. They have a chance to become the fifth team in NCAA history to finish a season undefeated and have drawn comparisons to the last team to accomplish that feat: Connecticut's 2002 squad.

This Connecticut team has won games by an average of 30.8 points; that one set an NCAA record with an average scoring margin of 35.4 points. This team put three players on the all-American team (Renee Montgomery, Tina Charles and Maya Moore), as did the 2002 team (Taurasi, Sue Bird and Swin Cash). This team has the country's best player (Moore) and top point guard (Montgomery); so did the 2002 team (Bird).

After her team lost to the Huskies, 83-64, in the national semifinals Sunday night, Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer was asked where this Connecticut team fits with the other undefeated teams in NCAA history.

"I don't know about the hyperbole about the greatest team, whatever. How can you compare?" said VanDerveer, who has been coaching for 30 seasons. "But they're on a mission."

McLaren describes that mission as "proving a point on each possession, no matter who we're playing." Charles calls it "a swagger, a competitiveness on every possession." Both players point to Montgomery, the 5-foot-7 senior point guard, as the catalyst behind that.

Montgomery is one of the top players in program history; she is the only one to rank among the career top 10 in points, assists, steals and three-pointers. She averages 16.5 points and 5.1 assists. Against Stanford, she had 26 points, 6 assists and 4 steals, and "pretty much put us on her back," McLaren said.

But more than that, Montgomery is a hard worker who attacks every drill as if she's playing for the national championship. She hates to lose, whether it's a game of Cranium or a debate with a teammate. Each of her first three seasons at Connecticut ended with a loss shy of the national championship game.

"When you lose, it just sticks with you for so long," Montgomery said. "After a loss, I think about it for a long time. I think about what I could have done different or what we could have done as a team. As a point guard, I take it personally because my job was to control the game."

The one thing that ties Connecticut's three undefeated teams together is they each had "individual players whose personalities were so strong, almost to the point where everyone surrounding them didn't have a choice but to become more like them," according to assistant coach Jamelle Elliott.

The 1995 team, which won 35 games and the program's first national title, had Elliott -- who was an All-Met at H.D. Woodson in 1992 -- and Jennifer Rizzotti, while the 2002 team had Taurasi and Cash.

"I think that's definitely been the case this year with Renee's personality," Elliott said. "She's been able to get everyone on board with how competitive she is, with how hard she works every single minute of every single day. . . . She's just really well-connected with everything that goes on on this team. And when it's time to go on the floor, she's an all-out competitor."

Montgomery said she hasn't dared to dream about what it might be like to win a national championship, Connecticut's sixth overall and first since 2004. She's focused on the smaller things, like whether or not the Huskies can win the opening tip against Louisville.

"I think any time you have an opportunity to win a national championship, you can pretty much follow that trail and it leads right to the point guard or certainly to a guard who can control a game," Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma said. "Every great team has somebody like this on their team. She's just one of those special people."