Monday, April 7, 2025

Kaitlyn Chen, National Champion

Full circle.

Those were the words that Princeton head women's basketball coach Carla Berube said when TigerBlog asked her how she was feeling after watching one of her pupils, Kaitlyn Chen, win an NCAA championship with the UConn Huskies yesterday. 

Berube knows exactly what it feels like to reach that achievement, and she knows what it feels like to do so as a player for UConn, having done so as a freshman in 1995. 

"Thirty years apart," Berube said. "Incredible. So proud of Kaitlyn and the Huskies."

UConn was the only non-No. 1 seed to make either the men's or women's Final Four, but that didn't stop the team from dominating its two games in Tampa. 

The Huskies wiped out UCLA Friday night in the semifinals by an 85-51 count and then turned around yesterday to take down South Carolina 82-59. Those are not cupcakes. Those are two teams that were dominant all year. 

South Carolina is the team that has set the standard of late in women's college basketball, having won two of the last three and three championships since 2017, one year after UConn's last championship prior to yesterday. 

Geno Auriemma is, of course, the UConn head coach. He was already there when Berube played, and that 1995 team — which went 35-0 — won the first of his 12 NCAA titles. 

Was he thinking that he might have been stuck on 11 forever earlier this year? In some ways, his team operated under the radar, or as much under the radar as a UConn team ever can. 

Then the NCAA tournament came. And UConn turned it up several notches. 

In fact, its closest game in the tournament was a 78-64 win over Southern Cal in the regional final in Spokane. The average margin of victory for its six NCAA games? How does 32.8 sound?

The Princeton men's basketball history is the story of a lineage, one that started with Cappy Cappon and Butch van Breda Kolff and Pete Carril and Gary Walters and continues to this day with Mitch Henderson, one of the players on Carril's final team.

The women's team doesn't quite trace its own history that way. There is a hint of the men's tradition in this NCAA title, as Chen graduated from Princeton and Berube's program and then went to play as a graduate student for Aueriemma.

Chen herself is the definition of a winner. Between Princeton and UConn, the record of the teams she played on from March 1 onward was 24-3. That's ridiculous. 

She was a three-time Most Outstanding Player of the Ivy League tournament at Princeton. No other player in any Ivy sport on any team can say the same. 

She helped Princeton to two NCAA tournament wins. She was an Ivy Player of the Year. 

And then at UConn, her coach's alma mater, she started every game for an NCAA championship team. That's the way to go out. 

 What did Auriemma have to say about his point guard? 

"She walks into a situation that any kid would be intimidated by. I'm walking into UConn, and I've got Paige Bueckers over here an Azzi Fudd over here and I've this guy here. And now I'm going to walk in and I'm going to go 'Okay, give me the ball. I'm in charge.' That takes a lot of guts to be able to do that. One thing that I know: Princeton players, they're tough and they're full of guts because they have to be to get to where they want to go."

That's saying a lot. 

You know what else Princeton players are? Loyal. 

That's why so many of them were there to share the moment yesterday. 

That's about as special as it gets. Look at them all, right? 

Yes, Chen did this in a UConn uniform. But she's a Tiger, always, forever. And those are her teammates, always, forever. 

And Berube? She'll always be a huge part of the Kaitlyn Chen story. And the UConn story.

You don't have to take TB's word for it. You can see for yourself right here: 

Congrats all around, to Chen and Berube and Auriemma and every Princeton fan who was rooting so hard for the Huskies yesterday. 

And the picture? That's what "Full Circle" looks like.

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