UConn’s Auriemma reveals what makes Sarah Strong unique on the court
UConn’s head coach, Geno Auriemma, explains what makes Sarah Strong one of the top players in women’s college basketball.
STORRS, CT – Geno Auriemma couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
During a UConn women’s basketball practice last February, the Huskies were scrimmaging using rules from the now-extinct style of girls basketball called six-on-six that designates players as guards or forwards. Three players from each team on either side of the court – playing offense or defense – not crossing the center line.
Things got heated quickly as teammates clapped in each other’s faces and committed hard fouls.
At the center of it all was Huskies forward Sarah Strong, then a freshman whose quiet disposition was usually more stoic than spitfire. After recruiting her for years and coaching her for months, it was the first time Auriemma got a glimpse of Strong’s full competitive nature. It reminded him of one of his program’s most famous provocateurs, Diana Taurasi.
“You saw a different side of Sarah. You saw the Diana side,” Auriemma said. “(Strong) has a very mild, easygoing demeanor, but that just masks what’s underneath.”
Strong, now a sophomore, still rarely sheds that mask. As a frontrunner for a slew of awards including National Player of the Year, whose talent has WNBA coaches salivating two years before she will be draft eligible, Strong remains an enigma to the general public and, at times, to those who know her best.
She does not seek the spotlight, but it finds her on the court. Strong is the total package, a 6-foot-2 forward who sets the table for her teammates, scores at all three levels and smothers challengers on defense. She was a core member of UConn’s 2025 NCAA championship team and is a major reason the undefeated Huskies are favorites to make the title game again.
Strong’s greatest strengths are what she doesn’t always show: Her relentless competitiveness, intense study of her own game and ability to learn new things quickly, whether it’s a basketball concept or teaching herself to play the guitar and keyboard.
Strong plays aggressively but does not showboat. Any flash is in her skill, not her emotional reaction. In practice, though, Auriemma purposely criticizes his best player to bring out the fire he knows is there.
“Anything that puts her at a disadvantage and she has to fight back, I think she secretly relishes that,” he said.
Strong admitted as much. In her eyes, arrogance is the greatest sin.
“When people do too much on the basketball court, that really, that’s what gets me there,” Strong said. “I only get started if someone else gets started, I want to make that clear. Because I try not to yell, ‘And-one!’ or little things. Like, don’t talk trash to me, because I’m just gonna take it too far.”
When Strong was in fifth grade, she played on an AAU boys team coached by her father. Being underestimated by some of her male teammates only made her go harder.
Nobody can deny Strong’s skill now. She leads the Huskies in points, rebounds, steals and blocks. Her team just won its sixth consecutive Big East championship and earned the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
As talented as Strong is, she and Auriemma believe she hasn’t scratched the surface. Strong is just starting to define her brand of superstardom, and she’ll decide whether to let you in on the secret.
Geno Auriemma compares Sarah Strong to other UConn legends
Geno Auriemma considers where Sarah Strong sits among UConn legends like Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart.
Why you can’t measure Sarah Strong against past UConn stars
There’s a natural inclination to compare Strong to the UConn greats that preceded her, players like Sue Bird, Paige Bueckers, Napheesa Collier, Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart, and Taurasi. Auriemma disputes any one-to-one skill comparisons but said Strong possesses the same competitive drive, intelligence and multidimensional qualities as previous Husky gamechangers.
“All the great players that I’ve had the opportunity to coach all had similar makeups,” Auriemma said. “Sarah’s one of those high-level players who looks you right in the eye every time you’re talking to her and gets every single word you’re saying. And if she has a question, she’s not afraid to ask it because to her, ‘I don’t want to miss anything when I’m on the court.’
“She’s curious about the game and, I think she’s curious about life in general, and that contributes to her ability to play at such a high level.”
Strong holds UConn’s freshman record for rebounds, ranks second behind Moore in freshman points and ranks second behind Bueckers in freshman assists. This season, in Strong’s 59th career game, she became the third-fastest player in program history to score 1,000 career points, behind Moore and Bueckers. She also broke UConn’s sophomore steals record.
Strong grew up admiring Moore and Stewart, but squirms when observers try to juxtapose her game with any Husky legend.
“I don’t know why we’re comparing that. Like, I’ve only been in college two years,” Strong said. “Thank you for the compliment, but I don’t know, they’re really good and I don’t want to compare myself to them. I’ll just focus on what I can do to become a better basketball player.”
How Strong developed her game, her confidence followed
Strong has been working at perfecting her skill since she was 7, when her youth games were the opening act for her mom’s professional games in Spain.
Basketball is in Strong’s blood. Her mom, Allison Feaster, was a No. 5 draft pick in the 1998 WNBA Draft out of Harvard. She played 10 seasons in the league before finishing her career overseas. Her dad, Danny Strong, played at NC State and had a 15-year pro career in Europe. In 2006, the year Strong was born, her mom played for the Charlotte Sting while pregnant. Because of that, Feaster likes to say that Sarah was on a WNBA court in the womb.
Strong was born in Spain and lived all over that country and Italy, where her mom played, before moving to North Carolina at age 10. Back in the States, Strong lived close to both sets of grandparents and competed for her dad’s travel basketball team. The transition wasn’t easy, but Strong is adaptable.
“Her life experiences have really lent themselves to her development as a player,” Feaster said. “She’s had exposure to, ‘Oh, I got to get into this new system and survive.’ And whether it’s learning the language or figuring out how to play, she’s just really adept at that.”
Every Sunday, Strong and her dad trained for hours. Often, their workouts were in a backroad gym called, “The Barn,” an industrial shed with a full-size court and weight room. Strong played point guard when she was younger and thrived as a ball handler and passer. After she hit a growth spurt, she and her dad worked on her footwork so she could dominate the paint, too. They watched and dissected hours of video – of Strong’s games, UConn games, NBA games – to the point where Strong can’t watch a basketball game without analyzing every aspect.
“We always had the approach, ‘If you learn, let’s learn everything,’” Danny Strong said. “Let’s learn the game holistically. Her mom played inside, played outside. I played inside, played outside, and we both had long careers because we could do both. I think you become very valuable for your team when you can do a mixture of everything.”
The one thing Sarah Strong may have lacked back then was confidence. Her father had to urge Strong to take over games in high school because she would pass instead of shoot in critical moments.
Strong gradually accepted more responsibility, said Todd Monsey, who coached Strong for four summers as a part of USA Basketball’s 3-on-3 teams. Strong helped the U18 team win three consecutive FIBA World Cup gold medals from 2022 to 2024.
“When Sarah started to really believe that she was possibly the best player on every court she steps on — not that someone told her that, but that she really believed it — is when I think that the person grew and the player also grew,” Monsey said.
For Danny Strong, that shift was exemplified before UConn played in the 2025 national title game. Father and daughter have a long-running pregame tradition where Danny calls Sarah and delivers a motivational speech.
But as UConn prepared to face South Carolina, Danny was at a loss for words. He’d never competed in a national championship, what could he say to help his daughter? Then, his phone rang.
“She called me before I called her and said, ‘Dad, we’re locked in. We got this,’” Danny Strong recalled. “It was amazing, you know? We went through this whole path of me being that motivation, me being that person to have the words to say, and here she comes, calming my nerves in this moment.”
‘It’s like having a toy that you can play with’
UConn went 37-3 en route to the program’s 12th NCAA championship last season. In one of those losses in late December, Strong missed a pair of free throws in the final seconds and UConn lost to USC by two. The game haunted Strong, who spent her Christmas break at home watching it over and over.
Strong likes to win at everything. Soccer, chess, school field day competitions. She’s still that way, especially against her teammates in UConn assistant coach Chris Dailey’s “CD games,” which could be anything from trivia to bouncing ping pong balls into a cup.
Since the USC game, however, she’s worked to stop herself from ruminating and spiraling over mistakes. Perfection, after all, is impossible.
“Every game, just kind of reflecting on it, talk to my coach, talk to my family about it, because I’m sure they watched, get their advice and just forget about it,” Strong said. “It’s a game at the end of the day. I can’t do anything. I can’t go back to change it. It happened, so just focus on the next game.”
Strong still has imperfect games, but UConn hasn’t lost this season. The Huskies are 34-0 and beating opponents by an average of 38.4 points. According to Her Hoop Stats, Strong is the Division I leader in win shares (8.5), an advanced statistic that estimates the total number of wins a player contributes to their team during a season based on their offense and defense.
UConn guard Azzi Fudd, who is projected to be a top-five pick in this year’s WNBA draft, calls Strong the best player she’s ever played with, high praise considering she and Bueckers spent three seasons playing together at UConn. Strong averages 18.5 points per game, shoots 60.1% from the field, 42.7% on 3-pointers and 87.3% on free throws. She’s equally infallible on defense, where she forcefully blocks shots and deftly disrupts dribbles.
The Huskies average 15.6 steals per game, the most in Division I, and Strong leads the team in average steals (3.4) and blocks (1.6). And, she does it without fouling, averaging 1.6 personal fouls per game.
“I don’t go into a game thinking about how consistent can I be,” Strong said. “I feel like when I think about consistency or percentages, that’s when everything goes wrong. So I’m just kind of out there just having fun and playing basketball.”
Geno Auriemma looks to Sarah Strong, Azzi Fudd when UConn needs points
UConn’s Geno Auriemma looks to Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd when it comes to critical plays. Strong explains how she handles that pressure as one of the team leaders.
Strong’s versatility and efficiency make her a nightmare for opponents. She is too tall and strong to be defended by a guard, but too quick to be defended by a post player. She is a hub for UConn’s offense at the top of the key, where she whips passes to open teammates, and is a master of moving without the ball to find open pockets of space and quickly cut to the basket.
She is a puzzle yet to be solved, by opposing teams and by her own coaches. Auriemma said he and his staff are continuously tinkering with the best way to utilize Strong, much like they did with former UConn star Napheesa Collier.
“It’s like having a toy that you can play with, and how many different things can I make this toy do?” Auriemma said. “Knowing that there’s probably not much that you’re going to come up with and go, ‘I don’t know if that fits her game.’”
To stay prepared to play any role the Huskies need, Strong avoids creating individual statistical goals. Instead, she sets several small objectives each day: Communicate better, crash the boards, help a teammate. It makes success feel more attainable and less self-serving.
“I’d rather succeed little by little,” she said.
Strong remains her own harshest critic. If she misses a shot she normally makes or gets a shot blocked, Auriemma can tell from her eyes she’s chastising herself. But, he said, Strong won’t let those moments affect her play.
“Very much a perfectionist, but doesn’t let it paralyze her,” Auriemma said. “She’s not afraid to take risks.”
Strong is chasing championships, not the spotlight
Although Strong is good at many things, embracing the spotlight isn’t one of them. In UConn’s postgame press conferences, she answers questions asked directly but prefers to let her teammates, like Fudd and point guard KK Arnold, do most of the talking.
Asked whether she considers herself an introvert, Strong shot a sideways glance at UConn’s sports information director, Anna LaBonte, and asked for her opinion.
“You’re like an extroverted introvert,” LaBonte offered.
“Yeah, I’m a little bit of both,” Strong said. “Once you get to know me, I really won’t shut up. I don’t know how to read people. So at first, maybe.”
Strong keeps her cards close to the chest. She first met Arnold when they were USA Basketball teammates in 2022, and their bond grew when Strong arrived on campus in Storrs.
“She starts out quiet and then pops out of her shell,” Arnold said.
During Strong’s first summer with USA Basketball, Monsey said Strong was so quiet the coaching staff rarely heard her speak. At practice and in group text messages, Strong responded with a thumbs up to show she understood.
One night in Hungary, Strong walked up to a piano in Team USA’s hotel lobby and started to play popular radio songs. The rest of the team reacted with surprise because Strong had never mentioned she played.
“I don’t think there’s much that Sarah Strong can’t do,” Monsey said, laughing.
Strong is an introspective person. She keeps a daily journal, a practice she started last season, jotting down feelings and pregame goals. She likes to look back at previous entries.
Still, Strong doesn’t feel an urge to share those self-examinations with anyone outside her inner circle. Her social media profiles are polished and professional, filled exclusively with UConn basketball photos and sponsored advertisements. No selfies or vacation photos. No family pets or parties. Nothing that offers a glimpse into her personal life.
“They know enough,” Strong said.
None of this has happened by accident. Strong’s parents encouraged her to stay grounded and allow her game to speak for itself.
“I know there’s an expectation of athletes who are in the public eye to always have something to say or to act a certain way,” Feaster said. “I applaud her for being true to who she is but also understanding that there’s growth to be had as well throughout the process.”
Strong prefers to lead by example, but she is slowly getting comfortable being more vocal. Although she leaves the rousing locker room speeches to others, she will speak up in the heat of the moment if the team is struggling. Like in that six-on-six game.
“She’s starting to become a great leader and seeing her from last year compared to this year is a huge growth,” UConn center Jana El Alfy said. “Seeing her talk more, I think that’s what we really need from her, just being an even better leader than she was last year.”
Strong happily let Bueckers and Fudd lead the way last season. Fudd still absorbs a lot of the attention this season. But, next season the Huskies will be Strong’s team. She’s about to become the primary face of the program, whether she likes it or not.
It’s a big job for a team steeped in history. The Huskies are attempting to win a second consecutive national championship. Only three women’s basketball programs have done it: UConn (2002-2004, 2009-2010, 2013-2016), Tennessee (1996-1998, 2007-2008) and USC (1983-1984).
“You come to UConn because you want to win national championships and do whatever happened in the past – but at the same time, it’s your season,” Strong said. “Their championship isn’t going to help you.”
Although she’s already been named unanimous Big East Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, Strong doesn’t care about individual accolades. She cringes when she thinks about making an award acceptance speech. Growing up, her mom said, she wasn’t watching her own highlights at the breakfast table.
When asked to name an accomplishment she’s proudest of, Strong mentioned the Huskies’ entire team achieved GPAs of at least 3.0 in the fall semester and highlighted Big East Freshman of the Year Blanca Quiñonez for earning a 4.0.
It’s easier for Strong to uplift her teammates than to celebrate herself, and easier for her to care about how she’s perceived on the court than off it.
“I’m not really focused on the spotlight. I just feel like I’m just here,” Strong said. “Especially people on the outside, I’m not gonna try to feel any pressure from them. The only pressure I feel is from my coaches and showing up for my team.”
Strong calls the shots about what you see, on and off the court.
Maybe, if you keep watching long enough, you’ll see her mask slip. But don’t count on it.
