Sport Women's basketball Meetings total 46 | Next meeting TBA | |
First meeting January 18, 1996
Connecticut 87, Notre Dame 64 Latest meeting December 7, 2016
Connecticut 72, Notre Dame 61 All-time series Connecticut leads 35–11 | ||
The Connecticut–Notre Dame women's basketball rivalry is a college rivalry series between the UConn Huskies women's basketball team of the University of Connecticut and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish women's basketball team of the University of Notre Dame. The Huskies and Fighting Irish have met 46 times, including six times in the NCAA Tournament and twice in the NCAA Championship, with the Huskies holding a 35–11 advantage.
Background
The Connecticut Huskies and Notre Dame Fighting Irish women's basketball teams are two of the more successful teams in women's collegiate basketball. The UConn Huskies have won eleven national championships, while the Notre Dame Fighting Irish have seven Final Four appearances, with a National Championship in 2001. Both teams formerly played in the Big East Conference, and appeared in the title game of the Big East Tournament multiple times, with UConn appearing 23 times between 1989 and 2013, and Notre Dame appearing seven times in the same time period.
From April 2011 to March 2013, Notre Dame won seven out of its eight match-ups with UConn, the best performance of any team against UConn since Tennessee. However, Notre Dame fell to UConn in the 2013 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament despite Notre Dame beating them three times during the regular season that year. Notre Dame hasn't beaten UConn since.
In 2014, UConn and Notre Dame both went into the national championship undefeated. This is the first time two undefeated teams went to the title game in men's and women's NCAA Division I basketball history. This was also their first meeting in a championship game. UConn won that game handily. The next year, both teams made it to the title game again, where UConn won its tenth national championship and third national championship in a row. New York Times reporter Harvey Araton observed that in this "latest showdown between the premier women’s programs" there was an "absence of the mutual hostility" that had characterized the previous year's matchup.