Michigan Stuns No. 2 UConn 77-66 as Geno Auriemma Blames Himself for the Loss

No. 5 Michigan beat No. 2 UConn 77-66 on Thursday night at Crisler Center, the highest-ranked win in Michigan program history and the end of UConn’s 39-game regular-season winning streak. Te’Yala Delfosse scored a career-high 22 points, Olivia Olson added 19, and hundreds of the 9,575 fans flooded the court at the final buzzer. The coach on the losing bench did not blame his players. Geno Auriemma blamed himself.

How did Michigan pull away?

With a 13-2 run early in the fourth quarter that UConn never answered. The Associated Press reports the Wolverines turned a two-point lead into an 11-point win by outscoring the Huskies 22-13 in the final period, and Auriemma burned two timeouts trying to stop the momentum. Nothing worked. Michigan had four players in double figures, Delfosse with 22, Olson with 19, Stanford transfer Courtney Ogden with 12 in her Michigan debut and Syla Swords with 10, and they did it without starting point guard Mila Holloway, who is out indefinitely with an injured left leg. Senior Dallas Loughridge, all 5 feet 6 of her, ran the point in her place.

Why did Sarah Strong sit for most of the first half?

Because she picked up three fouls in about five minutes, and her coach never heard the warning. Strong, the reigning Associated Press women’s basketball Player of the Year, drew her second foul with 2:55 left in the first quarter and her third roughly 30 seconds later, Detroit Sports Nation reports, and she spent most of the rest of the half on the bench. She still finished with 13 points and a team-high eight rebounds, but she fouled out with 18 seconds left and UConn down 10. Auriemma said afterwards that the bench tried to tell him the previous foul was her second and he did not hear them. “That was on me, that was my fault,” he said. UConn’s only other player in double figures was freshman Jovana Popovic, who led the team with 25 points.

What did Auriemma actually say about the loss?

More than coaches usually say after a November game. He credited Michigan’s preparation first, telling reporters they were way more ready from the opening tip, better organised and more disciplined, and ran their stuff, the Associated Press reports. Then he went further, saying UConn had spent more time preparing for Michigan than for any game this early in the season, and still could not guard anybody. The Detroit Free Press reports he had watched more film for an early-season opponent than he had in years, and knew his team could play its best and still lose. That is the part that stings for UConn: this was not a team caught cold. It was a team that saw it coming and still could not stop it.

Why does Kim Barnes Arico keep ending UConn streaks?

Because she has done it before, 14 years ago, at a different school. In 2012, in her last season coaching St. John’s, Barnes Arico’s Red Storm ended UConn’s 99-game home winning streak, NCAA.com reports. On Thursday, in her 15th season at Michigan, she ended the Huskies’ 39-game regular-season run. “How many teams beat UConn? It doesn’t happen,” she said afterwards, and the numbers back her up: EssentiallySports reports Michigan’s record against top-five teams now stands at 3-47. Swords, one of the juniors who committed to Michigan believing nights like this would come, put it more simply after the game: “We built this house.” Barnes Arico called the win a statement, and said it certainly feels like one.

What made this Michigan team ready for UConn?

A summer spent thinking about Texas. Michigan is coming off the best season in school history, 28-7 with a second Elite Eight appearance, and the Detroit Free Press reports the ending is what drove them: a 77-41 loss to Texas in the regional final, with a Final Four berth on the line, in which the young Wolverines got bullied. All summer the staff talked about it and studied it, and when practice began Barnes Arico showed them the tape again and prepped them like they were playing Texas, demanding they break a press without dribbling against seven defenders. She wanted practices harder than any game. On Thursday, when Strong and Popovic hit three quick three-pointers to wipe out Michigan’s halftime lead, the training kicked in: Ogden made a layup and a jumper, Delfosse followed with a layup, Swords hit a three, and Delfosse hit two more from deep. Michigan has never reached a women’s Final Four, and this was the first time the program has beaten a top-five team at Crisler.

What happened after the buzzer?

The court disappeared under the crowd. Hundreds of the 9,575 fans at Crisler flooded the floor, the Associated Press reports, and the Detroit Free Press describes the student section swarming the court and dancing with the team. It was a fan incident of the celebratory kind, the opposite of the confrontation that made Sophie Cunningham’s week about a fan and a process failure, and the same week the WNBA closed its own process dispute over a timeout New York never got to use. Some UConn fans online went the other way, with “Fire Geno” posts circulating after the loss, but the lasting image from Ann Arbor is the celebration. UConn’s 39-game run sits in the long shadow of the longest college basketball winning streaks ever recorded, and ending one in November, at home, in front of a full student section, is the kind of night a program builds its identity around. Columbia’s week showed the other side of college basketball’s coach stories, a suspension and a public statement of support; Michigan’s week showed the version every coach wants.

What happens next for both teams?

Sunday, and then a schedule that does not let up for UConn. The Huskies host No. 10 Iowa, and Michigan hosts Wright State at 2 p.m. at Crisler Center, the Associated Press reports. UConn’s tests keep coming: nine games against current top-20 teams, including top-ranked South Carolina on November 24 in a Final Four rematch, the game after which Auriemma yelled at Dawn Staley in the handshake line. Michigan’s test is different, and harder in its own way: proving that a November night was a statement and not a peak. The Wolverines open the season 1-0 with the biggest win in program history, and the next poll will tell them how far it moved them. UConn, meanwhile, has lost a regular-season game for the first time since February 6, 2025, and the coach who has won more than anyone in the sport’s history has already said the part that matters most. It was on him.