Since the turn of the year, Tennessee had lost five games by a combined 15 points. Four of those losses came against top-10 teams as the Lady Vols sought their first marquee victory in the Kim Caldwell era.

He doesn't recall much about that Jan. 6, 1996, meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee, the third time in 12 months his UConn Huskies faced Pat Summitt's Tennessee Lady Vols. But he remembers how electric the environment was, how there wasn't an arena of that size, with that energy, on any other college campus in the country.

The UConn women’s basketball came up short in a fourth-quarter comeback, suffering its first upset against No. 19 Tennessee since 2007.