UConn Women’s Basketball Legacy: Back to the Beginning

By Meghan Culmo / Photographs by UConn Athletics

When Meghan (Pattyson) Culmo played college basketball for University of Connecticut’s (UConn) women’s basketball team from 1988-92, she connected immediately with Coach Geno Auriemma. She remembers the humble beginnings of the team. She remembers teachers back then giving extra credit to attend the games to boost attendance to every game at Gampel Pavilion being sold out now.

Her journey with the team continues to this day. She was an assistant coach from 1993 to 1995, followed by nearly 30 years as an analyst on radio (1996) and television (1997-present). Although this is a big year with the 30th anniversary of the team’s first national championship (1994-95 season), even more of a milestone is the 40th season of Auriemma being the UConn women’s basketball team’s coach. On November 20, 2024, Culmo was proud to be the on-air analyst for SNY as UConn played Fairleigh Dickinson University’s team. That game win also culminated in Auriemma becoming the winningest coach in the history of NCAA Division I college basketball, surpassing Tara VanDerveer’s record of 1,216 games. Nearly 50 team alumni and so many others attended the momentous game to honor Auriemma and his legacy.

Culmo reminisces about the start of her UConn basketball journey.

“Seriously, no one saw this coming.

In the summer of 1987, I stopped by campus to talk face to face with this nice coach I had talked to a bunch of times on the phone. It seems that every time we spoke, we talked forever. Unlike other head coaches I spoke with, I really enjoyed talking to him. We seemed to think the same way, even had a similar sense of sarcastic humor without taking ourselves too seriously. I looked forward to his calls. In our many talks, I told him my family had a place on Cape Cod. He invited me to stop by campus the next time we went up.

Campus seemed nice enough to me. A bit country but I was raised in Bucks County, Penn.; it felt like home. I don’t remember much about the facilities, other than the fieldhouse was small. But I had no frame of reference. I thought it was great—probably because I thought he was too. I couldn’t honestly tell you about the locker room. That is because he didn’t show it to me. I learned years later he was too embarrassed to show recruits. It was just a rectangular room with an old, gross blue rug and blue lockers that were possibly the first lockers ever made.

I knew that University of Connecticut was the place for me on that visit—maybe even before—but kept it to myself. There was something about Geno Auriemma that just felt comfortable. Chris Dailey was the same. The first time I spoke with her on the phone, we spoke for an hour. She knew my cousins in New Jersey. I was excited to learn we were both born in the same hospital a few years apart. We are big believers in “signs.” This was the first of many signs we have experienced over the past 35-plus years, which could be a whole other article or a book. This was meant to be. And I’m still here!

The reality is, nobody—and I mean nobody—ever thought UConn’s women’s basketball would grow to what it is today. Nobody. If Geno and Chris say they saw this coming, I would question that. It was so different back then. I got to UConn in the fall of 1988. Gampel Pavilion wasn’t even built. The fieldhouse, well, that’s a whole other conversation. (You remember what I said about the locker room, right?) While it was a dump, we loved it. Who wouldn’t love walking out onto the green, rubber, all-purpose floor to then walk up onto the blue and tan wood court that was regularly assembled and disassembled to make space for other sports teams and the recreation department. Oh yeah, UConn basketball was so big back then that it had to get out of the way of the regular students who participated in the recreation department. Imagine that today? But game day, oh, that was something. As the home team, we sat on a nice white bench. It looked like a church pew, but a pristine white one.

Fans? We had approximately 50 fans or, on a good day, close to 100. As extra insurance, since Geno and Chris had to teach classes as a part of their salaries (he signed for a whopping $30,000 and her for less), they would give extra credit to their students to come to our games.

Winning Changes Everything

My freshman year, 1988-89, we were winning, and we kept winning to a 24-6 record season. We were one game away from securing the school’s first-ever Big East Regular Season Championship. Fans started to catch on and, low and behold, we had to roll in extra bleachers for the occasion. About 1,200 fans showed up to that game and a five-piece pep band. This was the big time! It could not get better than this.

We proceeded to win the school’s first ever Big East Women’s Tournament Championship a few days later, beating the host team, the Seton Hall Pirates. Amazingly, this 3-day tournament was played without our head coach, Geno Auriemma, who had been disciplined by the conference thanks to an administrative error made by UConn athletic officials. We apparently played too many games on our schedule; we had to forfeit our last regular season home game against Syracuse. Geno couldn’t attend our last regular season game at St. John’s. We played while he stayed on the bus; Watson, our bus driver, ran the score out to him throughout the game (remember this was pre-cellphones).

Geno couldn’t attend the banquet. He won Coach of the Year that year, but he couldn’t go. They didn’t even announce the Coach of the Year award. I suppose that was their way of further punishing him. He also couldn’t coach the tournament. This is partly why Chris Dailey has coached many games in his absence—it wasn’t always illness and deaths in the family. She was 4-0 after it all.

So, we win our first ever Big East Tournament Championship, securing our first ever NCAA tournament berth…and Geno couldn’t even be present. Still crazy to think about it. He was in a hotel room watching his three young children, fielding updates on the phone by his wife, Kathy, who called from a pay phone in the first half from the lobby of Seton Hall’s Walsh Gymnasium. When Seton Hall head coach Phyllis Mangina realized what Kathy was doing, she insisted Kathy use her office to make those updating calls to Geno. That saved some money; he wasn’t making then what he’s making now.

Who would have thought that was the first of 28 tournament championships and 30 regular season championships—oh, and 11 national championships—for this small little cow college in the middle of nowhere?

No one knew who or where UConn was. Storrs? What? Where is that? Even many of the students back then went home on the weekends. Nobody seemed to care much about the women’s basketball team. Truth be told, I didn’t want anyone to know I played basketball. One of four kids and the only girl, I was always known as a tomboy and known for my athletic endeavors. While I was proud of how hard I worked and what doors basketball had opened for me, I was determined to leave my jock persona in Bucks County and create a new, less jock-ish identity. So, I wore a skirt to class every day and didn’t want anyone to know that I played basketball. I got such a kick out of it when friends I met on campus were shocked to learn I played basketball. My little experiment worked. Meanwhile, now, post-Covid pandemic, I welcome elastic waist pants and comfortable shoes.

I can remember countless times throughout my playing career when people would incredulously ask me, “What do you do around here?” “We win games,” I replied with my aforementioned sarcastic humor. You see, those “people” were parents of old AAU teammates who were now college rivals and, it was after kicking their butts again that the question was posed. I suppose it was better for them than simply congratulating me and our unknown team. Maybe it was a sign of winning things to come.”

Meghan Culmo is SNY’s color analyst for the UConn Huskies women’s basketball program since 2012. Previously, she was a color analyst on radio and television across the country for over a decade. She has appeared on Connecticut Public Television, ESPN, MSG and Lifetime Television, among others. While at CPTV, she hosted “The Geno Auriemma Show,” for 15 years.