Now comes the fun part.

After watching their team dismantle overmatched teams like Northeastern, Hofstra and most recently Iona, the UConn faithful finally get to see their Huskies get tested when second-ranked Stanford faces No. 1 Connecticut on Wednesday at the XL Center.

When I went to the Nov. 19 Yale/Arizona State game to write about the close friendship between Yale coach Chris Gobrecht and Charli Turner Thorne, her Arizona State counterpart, I took the opportunity to ask Charli about the UConn/Stanford matchup.

Considering that her Arizona State team played UConn in the 2009 NCAA tournament, is in the Pac-10 with Stanford and that she coached UConn's Tina Charles, Maya Moore (who missed the actual tournament but went through training camp) and Tiffany Hayes and Stanford's Jeanette Pohlen and Kayla Pedersen as the head coach of the U.S. team which won the World University Games, I thought she would be a good person to provide a scouting report.

Bear in mind that it was mid-November when I spoke to her and much has changed but here is what she had to say

"UConn without Renee Montgomery, I think that is kind of the question mark. That leadership is hard to replace, that is another great perimeter shooter, that creator and how she run the show. I think depending on how they develop (a point guard) ... UConn's got Tina but Stanford's got Jayne Appel, Nneka (Ogwumike), Kayla, Joslyn Tinkle. I don't know if Geno is going to use his bench more, Stanford might have a little edge on depth and UConn might have a little more star power. That is going to be a great game."

Ironically, when Stanford beat Tennessee the Cardinal only played seven players and Tinkle only played seven minutes. I would consider Lorin Dixon iffy to go but still expect the Huskies to go eight deep with Kelly Faris, Meghan Gardler and Kaili McLaren coming off the bench for the Huskies.