Coming into this season without graduated stars Tina Charles and Kalana Greene and injured starter Caroline Doty, UConn coach Geno Auriemma fully expected games like Saturday's narrow escape at Notre Dame to be more of the rule than the exception.

With two freshmen and a sophomore in the starting lineup, Auriemma was fully anticipating the ebb and flow that comes with having such an inexperienced team.

The biggest surprise for Auriemma is that Stanford is the only one of the five ranked teams who have been able to capitalize on UConn's youth enough to hand the Huskies a rare loss.

"There is a long way to go between now and the end of the year," Auriemma said. "Bria, to start with, has done exactly what most freshmen do. She has been really good, not so good, she has been average. She has been everything you could imagine, she has played great defense, she has played awful defense, she has shot the ball well, she has not shot the ball well. She has handled the ball well, she hasn't handled the ball well.

"I think for somebody like Bria, the regular season is all geared towards getting her mentally and physically ready for the NCAA tournament which brings a whole other set of issues. It will be her first NCAA tournament. Stefanie is the same way. It is constant learning experiences. Samarie I don't think has made as much progress that she did in the first month, she has slowed down for whatever reason and that is something that has to get better and it has to be addressed. It comes down with all three of those guys that there is a level of intensity and a level of aggressive you have to have to play that position."

So what has been the biggest adjustment Auriemma and his coaching staff has had to deal with?

"We have to go over the scouting report earlier, we have to do more of it in practice, we have waste more time worrying about the other team than we ever have before," Auriemma said. "The last couple of years, we spent way more time more concerned about ourselves than the other teams. Now with this team, you have to spend a lot of time being concerned with who they have, what they have, what they are going to do, how they are going to do it because it is new. It takes more than just doing it a couple of times to do it. You have to do it a lot because this team doesn't have the basketball IQ that the last two teams have, nor should they have. "

Auriemma was asked if he was enjoying the more hands on teaching aspect as he tries to bring the younger players up to speed.

"Nothing that we are doing from a coaching standpoint is more fun yet," Auriemma said. "I think it can be more fun when we started to see some of the results but during it while you are trying to get to that point, it is not a whole lot of fun.

"Teaching is fun but teaching is fun when you see the results of your teaching. Then it becomes fun, the actual teaching part becomes a struggle. If you have a pet, teaching your dog how to go pee outside is fun once he stops peeing on your rug. The more he keeps peeing on your rug, that whole teaching thing isn't a whole lot of fun."