It's finally their time

Blue-and-white tears have poured into the streets of Kansas City, Bridgeport, Fresno and Tampa over the last four years.

On April 6, 2004, Diana Taurasi and Geno Auriemma left the New Orleans Arena triumphant, basking in the glow of three consecutive championships. UConn fans were on top of the world, and Auriemma seemed poised to forever surpass Tennessee's Pat Summitt as the supreme coach in women's college basketball.

But history and fate have dealt Auriemma a humbling blow over the last four years.

In 2005, the Huskies never learned to adjust without Taurasi and they lost in the Sweet 16.

In 2006, a missed four-foot jumper by Charde Houston ended UConn's season in front of its home-state fans.

In 2007, LSU's Sylvia Fowles turned UConn's California trip into a nightmare.

And last year, Stanford's Candice Wiggins tormented the Huskies, and Renee Montgomery's shooting touch wore off at the worst possible time - in the Final Four.

The last two seasons, UConn was a major favorite to take home the hardware. Instead, Summitt and the Lady Vols swooped in and picked up a couple more national titles for themselves.

Nothing is a given. That's the one history lesson every UConn fan should take away from this title drought. What seems set in stone can collapse at a moment's notice.

If it seems like I've written part of this column before, it's because I have. With every NCAA Tournament that has come during my four years at UConn, expectations have gotten that much higher.

And every year, those expectations were dashed in increasingly frustrating ways, to the point that UConn fans had to have been asking, "What will it take to win one of these things again?"

That's the million-dollar question, and luckily for fans of the program, Auriemma is the man with the million-dollar plan.

It took four full years, but Auriemma has finally amassed the kind of overwhelming talent that should make UConn a shoo-in to be in St. Louis on Tuesday, April 7, when a new national champion will be crowned.

ESPN will be hyping Maya Moore and Tina Charles to no end, and rightfully so. They're the best player and the best center, respectively, in America.

But for now, keep your eye on Montgomery. She's a senior who has lived through three years of disappointment. And she is a much better all-around player than she was at this time in 2008.

As a scorer, and as a passer, Montgomery's fate will ultimately be UConn's fate. So far this season, that's a formula that hasn't failed.

I have no doubt that 33 games, all won by 10 points or more, are no fluke. As Auriemma said recently, if this were a best-of-five tournament, you could give UConn the trophy right now.

But in the NCAA Tournament, it only takes one bad game. It's a lesson Montgomery, and everybody else in the UConn program, has learned the hard way.

Finally, though, everything seems to be lining up just right for UConn and, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money down on the Huskies' Big Three cutting down the nets.

However, if the Huskies can't bring home a title in 2009, the old question will return: "What will it take?" Given the talent of this team, I'm not sure even Auriemma could answer that question.