Breanna Stewart will take the court Saturday at Gampel Pavilion for senior day when Connecticut hosts Tulane (ESPN3, 1 ET), looking to extend its 64-game winning streak and move one step closer to its 11th NCAA championship and sixth perfect season.
Stewart has experienced just one loss at Gampel, a 73-72 defeat to rival Notre Dame on Jan. 5, 2013, of her freshman season. The nation's top recruit coming out of high school, Stewart had two opportunities to give the Huskies the lead in the final minute. She missed them both.
Stewart has rarely missed since.
The reigning Wade Trophy winner, two-time AP Player of the Year, and soon-to-be No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft has led the Huskies to 111 wins in their last 112 games, all of which have come by double digits. Along the way, Stewart has climbed up the UConn record books, and currently ranks second in program history in both points (2,461) and blocked shots (380), and fifth in rebounds (1,071). While the names that surround her are some of the best in women's college basketball history -- Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Rebecca Lobo, Tina Charles -- there's no question "Stewie" belongs on this Mount Rushmore.
True, Stewart won't outscore Moore or outrebound Charles, and she can't recapture the magic of "we have Diana, and you don't," or Lobo and UConn's first perfect season. But none of Stewart's predecessors had a shot at four consecutive national championships or displayed the same versatility as the 6-foot-4 forward.
Stewart is the only player in the history of women's Division I basketball with 300 career blocks and 300 career assists, and has four games this season with at least 10 points, five rebounds, five assists and five blocked shots.
No other active player in Division I basketball -- men's or women's -- has more than three such games in their entire career. Stewart leads women's Division I basketball with an efficiency rating of 27.2, three points higher than the next closest player, and is shooting 41.7 percent from 3-point range and 59.3 percent from the field this season.
But Stewart's ability to shine on the biggest of stages is what truly makes her stand out. Three of her highest-scoring games this season have come against ranked opponents; she had double-doubles against third-ranked Notre Dame and second-ranked South Carolina, scoring at least 25 points in both games.
And if Reggie Jackson was Mr. October, Breanna Stewart is Ms. April, one of two players in Division I basketball history to be named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player three times. The other? UCLA's Lew Alcindor.
At 27-0 and beating opponents by more than 40 points per game, Stewart and the Huskies look primed to become the first Division I women's basketball team to win four consecutive national championships. In doing so, Stewart and her fellow members of the 2012 recruiting class -- senior Moriah Jefferson and junior Morgan Tuck (who redshirted the 2013-14 season due to injury) -- can become the first players in Division I basketball history -- male or female -- to win four consecutive national championships. John Wooden's UCLA men won seven consecutive titles from 1967-73, but players like Alcindor and Bill Walton were only eligible to play three seasons due to a rule that barred freshmen from varsity competition until 1972.
Four titles in four years has been Stewart's goal since she arrived in Storrs, and with just a handful of games remaining in her college career, the target is well within range.
Stewart rarely misses.