The Huskies women’s basketball team won its 17th Big East Tournament Championship Tuesday night, defeating Notre Dame 73-64 to win an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Geno Auriemma and his team will learn Monday night at 7 p.m. who their first round opponent in the tournament will be. That game will take place on March 20 at Gampel Pavilion, one of 16 first-round sites.

Surrounded by a gaggle of reporters at the Big East women’s basketball media day in New York City last October, Hall of Fame coach Geno Auriemma was asked if he was feeling about the 2010-2011 season as he did in 2002-2003, when he had the defending national champions returning with the best player in the country, Diana Taurasi, leading an inexperienced team.

As the Huskies face the start of post-season play Sunday in the 2011 Big East Championships at the XL Center in Hartford, Auriemma commented that he has experienced the same emotions and worried about the same problems this year with a young team led by senior All-American Maya Moore.

“The same things kept me awake as then, the same worries probably more so this year because we didn’t have Diana and Maria [Conlon] handling the ball,” he said. “It was a little bit different, but for the most part it felt the same. I hope the results are going to be the same. Maya handles it differently than Diana, but everything else, there are a lot of similarities.”

This year’s edition of the young Huskies team extended the program’s unbeaten streak to an NCAA record 90 games before closing out the regular season 29-1, which resulted in a 19th regular season Big East title. The Huskies’ winning streak against Big East opponents is now at 66 games, including Big East and NCAA tournament games. All of this has been accomplished in recent weeks with only eight players in uniform, following the pre-season knee surgery for sophomore guard Caroline Doty, the transfer of freshman forward Samarie Walker, and last week’s stress reaction foot injury to redshirt sophomore reserve center/forward Heather Buck.

At various points in recent weeks, Auriemma has noted that as the regular season winds down and the post-season begins, most teams rely on six or seven players even when the bench is filled. UConn’s starting five of Moore (23.4 points, 7.8 rebounds), junior guard Tiffany Hayes (14.1, 4.9), sophomore guard Kelly Faris (7.7, 6.5), and freshmen Bria Hartley (12.7, 3.7) at guard and Stefanie Dolson (9.2, 5.6) at center, now will have senior guard Lorin Dixon (3.2, 2.3) as primary relief for fatigue or fouls. Guard Lauren Engeln and center Michala Johnson, both freshmen, recently have seen increased time on the court in the last few minutes of games.

“There’s always a different mindset at this time of year. What you have is kind of a rebirth. You go September to March 1 and that’s a long grind, but once March comes around, you can see the Big East tournament a few days away,” Auriemma said. “There’s a definite difference in our practice leading up to post-season play. They know it. I know it. You can feel it, sense it. I think that’s what good teams do. You can smell the finish line.”

Yet although he did not expect his team would post a third consecutive undefeated season, Auriemma’s young players progressed more quickly than he thought possible.

“I’m surprised this year because I didn’t think Bria and Stefanie would be ready as early as they were,” he says. “I thought it would be like it was [last Monday against Syracuse], bringing Bria in off the bench. I never thought Stefanie would have to play that many minutes. And they both played better than I thought they would play.”

The UConn student-athletes also say that their preparation and respect for opponents will not allow the team to become complacent or over-confident when the next loss means the end of the season.

“You’ve got to beat the team in front of you to move on. You don’t take any game for granted,” says Dixon, who with Moore shares a 143-3 career record, three Final Four appearances, and two NCAA titles at UConn. “We’re going to play any team like they’re No. 1 in the country. That’s something we bring to every game. We pay respect to everybody, because we say on any given night you can play your best game and beat us so we’ve got to come prepared.”

The Big East coach who knows the Husky mindset as well as anyone is Jamelle Elliott, now in her second year as head women’s basketball coach at Cincinnati, who was a Huskies assistant coach during the 2002-2003 season. Following that championship season Elliott, writing in UConn Magazine, described Auriemma’s leadership with that young team as one of his best coaching efforts.

“At the end of the day, if Geno Auriemma has five players who can play I wouldn’t count him out,” Elliott said earlier this week about the Huskies’ post-season prospects. “He’s got a superstar like Maya Moore who can play, and to have two freshmen come up and play like Bria Hartley and Stefanie Dolson have played and contributed in a major way, it’s a tribute to him and the rest of the coaching staff.”

Members of the team have started to receive individual recognition for their successful year. The Big East announced on Thursday that Moore and Hayes were named to the All-Big East First Team, with Moore as a unanimous selection. Hartley was named to the All-Big East Second Team and was a unanimous selection to the league’s All-Rookie Team, with Dolson also a unanimous selection. Faris was an Honorable Mention selection to the All-Big East Team.

The Huskies, the top seed in the Big East Tournament, play Sunday at 2 p.m. at the XL Center in Hartford against the winner of Saturday’s game between No. 8 seed Georgetown and the winner of today’s game that matches No. 8 Syracuse and No. 16 Seton Hall.