WOMEN Huskies return today to site where they earned 1st Final Four

The top-ranked Connecticut women will play St. Joseph's at the Palestra.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
PHILADELPHIA -- Two-time defending NCAA women's basketball champion Connecticut will make a special pilgrimage to the mecca of college basketball today when the top-ranked Huskies (7-0) play St. Joseph's at the Palestra.
Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma, who grew up in Norristown, Pa., has made a homecoming almost every year against Villanova in Big East competition.
There was also that special trip in 2000 at the First Union Center when the Huskies captured the second of their four NCAA titles.
But this is the first time the Huskies will play at the Palestra since their first successful effort in the national spotlight in March 1991.
Earned first Final Four berth
The Huskies, then ranked No. 13, surprised North Carolina State and Clemson at the Palestra to capture the NCAA East Regional title and advance to their first Final Four.
Coincidentally, the national finals that year were held in New Orleans. The finals will be back in New Orleans in April, and Connecticut hopes to be there in pursuit of its third straight NCAA title.
The Huskies have been perennial front-runners since 1995, when they upset powerful Tennessee and earned their first No. 1 ranking on their way to their first national title and undefeated season.
The seeds to 1995 Connecticut's success were sown at the Palestra in 1991.
Before the 1991 East Regional, Penn State, which had gained its first No. 1 national ranking, was expected to help draw a large crowd by advancing to the regional in Philadelphia.
Penn State was upset, however, in the second round at home by James Madison. Connecticut, the Big East champion, barely survived Toledo at home and was on its way to Philadelphia.
"We were just a bunch of slow white girls," said Meghan Pattyson, one of the stars of the 1991 team and the MVP of that season's Big East tournament.
Remembers the past
Pattyson, a graduate of Central Bucks East who now broadcasts women's games on Connecticut Public Television, remembers when the Huskies went unnoticed.
"I'm sitting in class at Central Bucks East and said to the girl next to me that I was going to go to college at UConn," Pattyson recalled last week. "And she remarked, 'Why do you want to go to Alaska?' thinking I was going to that Yukon."
In those days, the local following was much smaller and sellouts were not commonplace on the campus in Storrs.