STORRS — There are more than enough reasons to honor the members of the 2015 And ’16 UConn women teams for their basketball exploits.
These things stand on their own and speak for themselves, especially for those who played on four straight national championship teams, those who became significant professional players. But for everyone, in particular Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier And Morgan Tuck, To name just three who were expected in Storrs to be honored Thursday night, the impact goes beyond buckets and box scores.
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“It inspires me so much to have alumni like this championing women’s basketball,” said junior KK Arnold. “Having them go through the program and come back, just seeing what they do on and off the field, it kind of inspires me to be that way off the field and carry myself in a different way.”
Stewart and Collier have been WNBA MVPs, competed for championships, won Olympic gold medals together, and any short list of great players in the world right now would include them. For one season, they overlapped at UConn, winning the 2016 NCAA tournament.
Their impact, as evidenced by their sharing of the Sports Illustrated Innovators of the Year award for 2025, extends far beyond the field. As WNBA players fight for better share of the revenue they increased, Collier and Stewart took on leadership roles for the players’ association, high-level vice presidents under Nneka Ogwumike. They are prepared to stand out in contentious and seemingly deadlocked negotiations, and if there is a work stoppage delaying next season, to defend the rest of the league.
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“Phee didn’t say much when she was here,” Geno Auriemma said. “She was just a nice, quiet kid who played well every day, and Stewie wasn’t that different. Those guys were really quiet guys when they were here. I don’t know if that’s (a fact), but I could just see the scenario where the rest of the players would look and say, ‘Hey, I think these two guys would be great for us… do you want to get involved?’ It also comes from the territory, from what you’ve done, from your reputation, you’ve been a winner everywhere you go. went. They would be the best “Google me”.
The WNBPA base naturally gravitated and rallied around Stewart and Collier, who also pooled their resources and reputation and attracted investors to create Unrivaledthe off-season league that not only generates new television and advertising revenue for players, not only creates more leverage in collective bargaining with the NBA and WNBA, but allows players to supplement their WNBA salaries without going overseas all winter. The second season of Unrivaled is underway, although Collier will have to remain sidelined due to leg injuries.
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The early WNBA players were simply trying to start a professional league and keep it afloat. The new star players, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers, have brought the cachet and elements to fill arenas and propel the league into mainstream sports, and their support is essential to the union, but they haven’t been around long enough to play a leadership role in negotiations like these. This is the time for players to play hardball, and Stewart and Collier have provided the voice and the backbone and whatever they end up accomplishing will have lasting effects, in some ways similar to those of Baseball players of the 60s and 70s, the Curt Floods, Catfish Hunters, Dave McNallys and Andy Messersmiths, who helped their union bring down the old system in which the owners held all the cards.
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While Collier and Stewart have accepted the duty of being labor firebrands, one of their UConn teammates, Morgan Tuck, is making her mark on the management side, as the WNBA’s youngest general manager. The Connecticut Sun appear destined to be sold and relocated, so it’s unclear what Tuck’s future with that franchise will be, but she has asserted herself among the player personnel, crossing the Atlantic to find players and coaches under Jennifer Rizzotti’s front office, shattering the glass ceiling and serving as a role model for post-playing aspirations.
“When they leave here, you think they’re going to be successful,” Auriemma said. “Then you look back 10 years and the level of success is really beyond what you could have predicted there. Could you see Stewie becoming league MVP, of course, no one would be surprised by that. Or ‘Pheesa, and how far she’s come. Or Morgan Tuck being where she is, those things aren’t surprising, but the level they’ve reached, the chances they’ve taken, the risks they’ve taken taken and how their voice has become so important in women’s basketball, not just the WNBA. I’m not just, ‘I show up, I play, I get paid and I go home,’ but I want to leave a lasting impact as far as I’m concerned.
Stewart came to UConn with the stated goal of winning four championships and accomplished that in 2013-16. She was expected at Gampel in the company of Collier, Tuck, Kia Nurse, still active in The W and force behind an AAU program in her native Canada, Moriah Jefferson, Tierney Lawlor, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, Kia Nurse, Briana Pulido, Katie Lou Samuelson and Kiah Stokes. The 2015 and ’16 teams were to be inducted, as units, into the Honorary Huskies.
“That’s part of the reason I came here,” said Wisconsin transfer Serah Williams. “Just to see what it takes to be on the other side of success in women’s basketball.”
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Their accomplishments at UConn helped cement today’s culture of high expectations and high rewards in which 2025 champions and current top-ranked players thrive. The efforts and risks undertaken by Stewart and Collier and the executive path charted by Tuck will make the WNBA a better place for future players, including those who were expected to help honor them Thursday night.
“These players have done a lot for us” Kayleigh Heckel, sophomore said. “They’ve done a lot for the program and for women’s basketball in general and I think when they were playing here it wasn’t as big, so to be able to honor them now that women’s basketball has grown so much will be a great opportunity for them. In The W, taking on leadership roles, you see Napheesa and Stewie doing these things for the next generation, so I admire them a lot.”
