Hartford and Sacred Heart have had their chances to play the seven-time national champion UConn and it seems as if Fairfield is up next.

The Stags played UConn 16 times but just once in the regular season since 1993. While I was down at the Arena at Harbor Yard on Sunday for the Fairfield/Marist women's game (won by Marist 54-52) I did some asking around and a source told me that "it will happen. I'm not sure if it will be next season or the year but it will definitely happen."

The matchup makes sense since UConn likes to play at least one Connecticut team every year. Hartford didn't play the Huskies this season after meeting up in each of the last six seasons. Sacred Heart stepped into the void left when Hartford coach and former UConn star Jen Rizzotti decided to pursue home-and-home games against teams from BCS conferences instead of playing UConn annually at the XL Center. However, after this year's game Sacred Heart coach Ed Swanson said there would not be a game against UConn on the Pioneers' 2011-12 schedule.

There are some some connections. Fairfield coach Joe Frager is not only a UConn grad and member of the Huskies' baseball team during his time there, but he coached former UConn guard Maria Conlon during her first two seasons at Seymour High School. Then there is Jacquie Fernandes, a member of UConn's last two national championship teams, who is in her first season at Fairfield's director of basketball operations under Frager.

I spoke to Frager on hypothetical terms about what it would mean when he would bring his team up against his alma mater.

"I have a lot of fond memories of my time at UConn," Frager said. "Geno and his staff does a great job. When I was at Southern Connecticut and Seymour High School, I used to go up there as often as I could so I learned a lot from watching him and watching the staff. It will be a nice little homecoming until the tidal wave hits."

Swanson said after this year's game that he only plays UConn when he has a group of upperclassmen in key roles because taking a beating like the one the Huskies can put on a team can damage the psyche of a lesser experienced team.

"That is an astute comment because it is exciting to play the best program in America," Frager said. "Physically it is a demanding game and emotionally it is a demanding game because they beat top 20 teams by 40 or 50 points. You've got to get kids who approach the game the right way. Sooner or later you want to get into the ring with a champion, you want to take your shot so we will."

Ironically, when Frager was the head coach at Division II Southern Connecticut, he was the person pushing hard to set up an exhibition game between SCSU and UConn. By the time the game happened, however, Frager was coaching at Fairfield.

"It is kind of funny," Frager said. "He called me after I got the job here. Jokingly he said I've heard that a lot of teams are afraid to play us but I've never seen a guy switch jobs not to play us. It will be fun when it happens."

I also spoke to Fernandes (and will be putting up a blog in the next day or two about how her first season on the Fairfield staff is working out) and asked her what it would like if she went into either Gampel Pavilion or the XL Center as a member of Fairfield's coaching staff.

"It would be great for that current team to experience playing them," Fernandes said. "Everybody wants to play them and any time somebody who played at UConn plays them, it is special and something to remember. It would be great to go back to Gampel or Hartford. That would be awesome and there would be flashbacks going in even if I would go to the visitors' locker room this time."