This year’s Sprouts Farmers Market espnW Invitational will pit two of the top NCAA women’s basketball coaches of all time against one another as Geno Auriemma leads his legendary UConn Huskies program to a hardwood battle against Kim Mulkey, who is at the helm of the LSU Tigers’ resurgence. The game, scheduled for December 20 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, will be the first time since 2016 that these schools have faced one another.
UConn and LSU, winners of two of the past four DI WBB National Championships, last played nearly a decade ago. The Huskies defeated LSU 76-53 in November of 2016 en route to a perfect 38-0 season that resulted in the final of four straight title runs. Since then, each team has won one championship: LSU, for the first time in school history, in 2023, led by current WNBA player and Atlanta Dream forward Angel Reese; and UConn, in 2025, for a record 12th time.
While the attention will be on the women running the floor, there is not enough to say about the head coaches on the sidelines. Auriemma is the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history- men or women. He has been with UConn since 1985 and built the school into the premier dynasty of collegiate women’s basketball.
Kim Mulkey has continued to climb up the rankings of career wins after her hire at LSU, a then-lowly program. Since bringing in Mulkey in 2021, LSU has failed to reach 30 wins just twice. The Tigers have been to the NCAA tournament each year since Mulkey’s takeover, and she led LSU to its first national title in just her second year with the school. Before donning the purple and gold, Mulkey was a force at the University of Baylor, where she won three additional championships in 2005, 2012, and 2019.
Auriemma and Mulkey have locked horns nine times before this season’s slate, with Geno holding a slim 5-4 advantage, but Kim will certainly be looking to even up their all-time series in what is sure to be a marquee matchup across all of college basketball this season.
Getting this game scheduled will be considered a major victory for all of NCAA DI women’s basketball as the sport continues to expand and draw in larger viewing audiences. Allowing some of the top talent in the nation to square off on national television will only aid in this effort.
