Sarah Strong keeps NCAA success in the family
The daughter of one of the tournament's great underdog heroes is pushing UConn toward a possible 12th championship.
Nobody ever busted a bracket like Allison Feaster.
She was playing for Harvard in 1998, and the NCAA tournament puppeteers sent her and the Crimson to Stanford in the first round. That’s on Stanford’s homecourt. Harvard was miffed that it was a No. 16 seed; Stanford was nervous because it was a No. 1 seed that suddenly didn’t have Vanessa Nygaard and Kristin Folkl, both of whom had torn their ACLs within a week of the game. But nobody but nobody expected Feaster to explode for 35 points and lead Harvard to a 71-67 cataclsym.
That happened 20 years before Maryland-Baltimore County knocked off Virginia in the first 1-vs.-16 upset in men’s NCAA tournament history.
So much has changed in women’s basketball since then, except for the unfortunate custom of top seeds playing early games at home. The game has outgrown that. But it hasn’t outgrown Feaster, who is now an executive with the Boston Celtics. Her latest contribution could be the next college legend, a 6-foot-2 freshman named Sarah Strong who can overwhelm inside and prosper outside. She is Feaster’s daughter, and on Monday night she teamed with Paige Bueckers to lead Connecticut to another Final Four.
That 78-64 victory also had an ACL context, because USC’s JuJu Watkins had torn hers the previous week. Watkins is the sophomore who already makes State Farm ads and could be the national Player of the Year. She had scored 25 on Dec. 23 in Hartford, when the Trojans knocked off UConn, 72-70. We’ll never know how Watkins might have affected this game, just as we’ll never know what Bueckers would have done in the 2023 tournament, since she had wrecked her knee during an off-season practice. UConn fans still remember 1997, when Shea Ralph suffered the first of five ACL injuries, and the Huskies fell short of their spring home, the Final Four.
But with Watkins theoretically eyeing two more collegiate years and Strong and South Carolina’s Joyce Edwards looming behind them, the circle of the game keeps widening.
Connecticut plays UCLA in the Final Four, on Friday night in Tampa. South Carolina, which went undefeated to win the title last year, plays Texas. The Gamecocks are 2-1 against Texas already, but they were spanked by both of the other semifinalists. UConn went to Columbia and won, 87-58, in February. Strong had 16 points and 13 rebounds in that one, and Azzi Fudd poured in 28 points. The Huskies haven’t lost since Feb. 6 and, even though they’re the only team in Tampa that isn’t a No. 1 seed, they look familiar and ominous.
It’s a little jarring to realize that UConn hasn’t won a national championship in nine years. They won 10 in 17 seasons, beginning in 2000. Throw the “D” word around as much as you’d like, but the UConn women were the closest thing to a dynasty that we’ve seen in American sports since John Wooden and the UCLA men. You know it’s a long honor roll when Bueckers becomes the third-leading scorer in school history and Diana Taurasi, the most decorated player in the game’s history, is only 10th.
You also know coach Geno Auriemma is feeling it when you hear his unfiltered press briefings. The other day he needled the administrators for creating two regionals instead of the usual four, and putting teams in Spokane with a Final Four by the Gulf of Mexico, 2,812 miles away. UConn played Monday night and will play UCLA Friday night. With Tuesday as a travel day, that leaves two days to regroup and prepare. On the men’s side, Auburn and Houston won on Sunday and don’t play until Saturday, in San Antonio. Duke and Florida actually have six days between games.
“In a normal world run by normal people there would have been only four teams here instead of eight,” Auriemma said, the day before the semifinal matchup with Oklahoma. “Which would mean there would be no games today. Which means we wouldn’t have to get up at 6 a.m. to have an 8 o’clock practice for an hour. God bless whoever wins Monday night. Whoever came up with this super regional stuff, and I know who they are, they ruined the game. Half the country has no chance to get to a game, but you’re making billions off TV. Well, actually you’re not. That would be the men’s tournament.”
A couple of days later, the subject was the transfer portal, which kicked in during tournament season.
“Can you imagine the NBA having free agency during the playoffs?” Auriemma asked. “At least in the pros you know who’s under contract and who’s a free agent. This is an environment where every single kid on every single team, throughout the country on all 350-something teams, is a free agent.”
And Geno had his usual jabs at his own players. “That might be Azzi’s career high for rebounds,” he said, fumbling for a stat sheet. “Yeah, she had one. That’s definitely her career high.”
All of which are signs that he sees it all coming together, not that he censors himself when times aren’t so good.
Strong is one of two Huskies to play all 38 games and averages 16.1 points and 8.8 rebounds. She also leads UConn in blocked shots, is second in assists and shoots 37.1 percent from three. When you add Azzi Fuld and Bueckers, ballhandler and former Ivy League Player of the Year Kaitlyn Chen and Egyptian center and deluxe rebounder Jana El Alfy, you see all the parts are there. But Strong, who with Edwards was among the top two recruits nationally last year, provides an added dimension. When USC came out smoking on Monday night and Bueckers hadn’t yet gotten situated, Strong kept the Huskies close. She wound up with 22 points and 17 rebounds, and Bueckers had 31 points.
Strong didn’t get all her basketball genes from Feaster. Danny Strong played at North Carolina State. Sarah was born in Spain where Feaster and Strong were playing professionally. They came back to settle near Raleigh, N.C., and Sarah played at Grace Christian in Sanford. The parents eventually split up, and Feaster is married to Milwaukee Bucks executive Milt Newton. Danny was the one conducting most of Sarah’s early morning workouts. But Feaster is close to Sarah, and she gets to as many games as possible. The parents were together in Spokane.
Feaster also played for the Charlotte Sting, where she was a teammate of current South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who diligently recruited Strong. But Auriemma had noticed Strong as a 15-year-old and advised his friends at USA Basketball that she was better than some of the national-team players. The early bond held up.
This was Connecticut’s 24th regional championship. Between 2007 and 2023 and except for the Covid season of 2020, the Huskies got to the Final Four annually. So they didn’t cut down the nets in Spokane. “I used to ask them every year if they wanted to do that and they kept saying no, so I don’t ask anymore,” Auriemma said. It’s just part of the routine, just like Allison Feaster, pulling for the Celtics and UConn and other giants. Only one Cinderella per family.