After seeing Maya Moore score 20 points in the first half of the Connecticut-Baylor game on Tuesday, Geno Auriemma delivered a message to his team at halftime.
"They can stop watching Maya and get involved," the UConn coach said.
Well, the Huskies have to keep watching Moore and don't get involved. After March, women's basketball fans will not see Moore in a UConn uniform any more.
So in order to win its third consecutive championship and extend its long winning streak, UConn must continue to give Moore the ball more. So far, Moore is helping UConn get off to a 2-0 start and she has averaged 25.5 points in the two games.
Moore's college basketball career is coming to a close this winter. She's setting her sights on accomplishing the same thing UConn graduates Rebecco Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Tina Charles did -- end a career with a national championship.
Moore is also one of numerous seniors who also want to end their college basketball careers on top. North Carolina's Jessica Breland (she missed all of last year while receiving treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma), Iowa's Kachine Alexander, Xavier's Amber Harris and Ta'Shia Phillips, Tennessee's Angie Bjorklund, Kentucky's Victoria Dunlap, Ohio State's Jantel Lavender, Oklahoma's Danielle Robinson and Duke's Jasmine Thomas are among the others.
Moore already played for two national championship teams. She helped UConn beat Stanford in the 2010 national title game in San Antonio and Louisville in the 2009 championship game in St. Louis.
But Moore is still looking more this winter. In order to celebrate another national title, she has to do it with five freshmen, two sophomores and one junior on the UConn roster. Senior Lorin Dixon is the other senior on the team.
Moore also hopes that she doesn't celebrate her senior year with a loss. The last time she experienced a loss was at the end of her freshman year, when UConn lost to Stanford in the semifinals of the Final Four in Tampa, Fla.
With the 65-64 win over Baylor on Tuesday, the Huskies improved to 2-0 and extended their winning streak to 80 games. UConn is eight wins away from matching the record 88-game winning streak set by the UCLA men's squad.
But Tuesday's victory wasn't easy. The Huskies came back from an eight-point deficit in the second half and had two of their players foul out down the stretch.
"I was speechless," Moore said in the University of Connecticut's Daily Campus on Wednesday. "I was just proud of the way my teammates responded, that was a really big moment for us. I thought we responded to the test and we did just enough to get it."
Moore finished with 30 points against Baylor, bumping her career point total to 2,219, which ranks her third on the UConn all-time scoring list. The three-time All-American scored 21 points against Holy Cross in the Huskies' season opener on Sunday.
Connecticut has been ranked No. 1 for 45 straight weeks. Baylor was the first ranked team the Huskies played this year. UConn will play three more ranked teams before the New Year arrives -- Ohio State (Dec. 19), Florida State (Dec. 21) and Stanford (Dec. 30).
The Huskies are looking for another national championship to add to their already growing trophy case. UConn can tie Tennessee for the most national championships in women's basketball with eight if it wins it all again this year at Indianapolis.
That would be a great way to put an end to a great basketball career like Moore's.
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