UConn coach Geno Auriemma is feeling pretty good about his latest recruiting class.

With all the letters into the UConn basketball office, Auriemma addressed the recruiting class of North Babylon (N.Y.) guard Bria Hartley, Laguna Hills (Calif.) High guard Lauren Engeln, Chaminade-Julienne of Dayton, Ohio wing Samarie Walker, Montini High of Lombard, Ill. forward Michala Johnson and Minisink Valley of Slate Hill, N.Y. center Stefanie Dolson.

"I think there is a real good mix in our class," Auriemma said. "We have some big guards, a big center, we've got pretty athletic kids coming in and they are all used to be winning programs which is obviously what we like. They all get along great, they all know each other and play against each other every summer.

"Other than Bria Hartley, there is no 'wow, they got Diana Taurasi, oh, they got Tina Charles and Maya Moore. Bria is the one everybody is talking about but I don't think anybody did any cartwheels when we signed Kelly Faris last year either and she turned out to be pretty good. I don't know if we have the best recruiting class in the country, we don't have the worst. When they get here, they will all be pretty good and they will help us. Unfortunately they are going to have to be pretty good and help us right away so that could be good or bad."

Hartley, a 5-foot-10 guard from North Babylon (N.Y.) High, was in attendance at the game and fills a need for a pure point guard.

Gatorade's New York state player of the year as a junior, averaged 22.4 points, 5.5 steals and 5.3 assists as a junior and enters her senior season with 1,373 points.
Engeln, a 5-foot-11 guard from Laguna Hills (Calif.) High, has 1466 points, 829 rebounds, 252 steals in her career. Walker, a 6-foot-1 wing from Chaminade-Julienne High in Dayton, Ohio, was the only high school junior to attend to USA Basketball junior national trials in May. She averaged 16.4 points, 10.2 rebounds and 3.5 assists last season and enters her senior season with 1,006 points, 676 rebounds, 171 assists and 144 steals.

Johnson, a 6-foot-3 forward who plays for Montini High in Lombard, Ill., suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first game of her junior season but is back, healthy and has added nearly 20 pounds of muscle. As a sophomore she averaged 18.3 points, 11.6 rebounds, 3.9 blocks as a sophomore.

Dolson, a 6-foot-5 center, is the first player at Minisink Valley in Slate Hill, N.Y. to score 1,000 points by the end of her sophomore season.

"I don't know what they are going to do when they get here but I know they all have potentially the ability to be really good players, they all love the game and recruiting them was a (snap)," Auriemma said. These kids all wanted to come to Connecticut and that is everything to me. it didn't take them a lot of convince them that this was the place for the, where they want to be."


Here are a few additional notes,

Senior forward Kaili McLaren will have her injured right foot examined tomorrow. She is likely to miss the game against Texas on Saturday.

After the game, the entire UConn team made their way over to the student section and exchanged hgh fives with the sizeable crowd that were in attendance.

"It dawned on me that our program has been rerally good since 1995, I mean on television all the time and everybody in the state of Connecticut knows who we are," Auriemma said. "For the last 15 years, a lot of these kids were in middle school, high school and kind of grew up with Connecticut women's basketball. Now here they are and they get a chance to experience it first hand. That is why they are all here. I think that is pretty cool and they have made an effort to be here. We had more students here in an exhibition game then we used to get 10 years ago in a non-TV game I think our players appreciate that. These are kids they sit in class with, it is pretty cool for them to come out on a Saturday afternoon and sit through a 70-point win."

Of course auctioning off an i-phone might have helped draw more students than usual. For the record, Melissa Davis was the winner.