Meet the UConn women's basketball All-Decade team: 1990-99

The Huskies' rise as one of the most dominant programs in college sports history began in the 1990s.

There was a Final Four berth in 1991, an undefeated national championship season in 1995 and the first All-American players who would become household names.

Here, we'll celebrate that 10-year run and those players with CT Insider's 1990s UConn women’s basketball All-Decade team.   

Eligibility for the list is having been a member of any teams for seasons that ended in the 1990s — from 1989-90 to 1998-99. All-Decade teams from the 2000s and 2010s will follow later this season.

Below are our choices as the 10 best players, listed alphabetically, from the era that unofficially started it all.

Svetlana Abrosimova (1997-01): Abrosimova's UConn career straddled two decades and she may have gained consideration for the 2000s team, having helped the Huskies to their second national championship by averaging 13.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and 4.2 assists as a junior in 1999-00. She lands here, though, due to her impact as an underclassman. Abrosimova averaged 14.5 points as a freshman and 16.6 points as a sophomore. Her career was cut short due to a foot injury 19 games into her senior season of 2000-01. She was selected by the Lynx with the seventh overall pick of the WNBA draft and played parts of 10 seasons in the league. The 6-foot-2 small forward also had a decorated career with the Russian national team, winning two European Championships and a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics. She was an inaugural inductee to UConn's "Huskies of Honor" program in 2006, having scored 1,865 career points, 13^th in program history.

Kerry Bascom (1987-91): Bascom was the Huskies’ first player to garner national recognition and she departed UConn in 1991 as the program’s all-time leading scorer with 2,177 points (currently eighth).  She had 31 career double-doubles, sixth on the all-time list. After averaging a career-high 22.6 points a game in 1988-89 (second all-time to Maya Moore's 22.8 in 2010-11), Bascom averaged 20.5 as a junior and 20 as a senior in 1990-91, leading UConn to its first Final Four appearance. She averaged 18.1 points and 7.6 rebounds in her career. Bascom, a three-time Big East player of the year and a WBCA All-American as a senior, was among the first group of players inducted into UConn's "Huskies of Honor" program in 2006. She scored a career-high 39 points in a 1991 NCAA Tournament second-round game against Toledo, a performance that Auriemma looks back as the moment his program changed forever. Bascom was named the most outstanding player in the 1991 East Regional. 

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Wendy Davis (1988-92): The Huskies’ sharp shooter when the program was starting to make a name for itself, nationally. Davis shot 43.9 percent on 3-pointers during her career, 45.7 percent as a senior in 1991-92. She scored 1,552 points, which ranks 24th on UConn’s career scoring list. In Dec. 1991, she made eight 3's in a game against Florida, then a program record and now two off the record of 10 shared by Maya Moore, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Katie Lou Samuelson. Davis’ 107 3-pointers made in 1991-92 ranks fourth on the UConn single-season list, behind Mosqueda-Lewis' 121 in 2014-15, Samuelson's 119 in 206-17 and Mosqueda-Lewis'118 in 2012-13. Davis is currently in her fifth season as coach at St. Joseph. She was the coach at Trinity in 2005-16.

Jamelle Elliott (1992-96): Elliott, one of the toughest and most efficient post players in program history, helped the Huskies to their first national championship in 1995. She finished with 1,054 rebounds (second in program history then, now seventh) and 1,387 points (11^th, now 35th). She was just the second UConn player, after Rebecca Lobo, to have 1,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds. Elliott played 135 games in her career, never missing one. Her career rebounding average of 7.8 ranks 10th on UConn's single-season list. UConn was 99-7 over Elliott’s final three seasons as a player. She is currently in her 15th season as an assistant coach at UConn. She was the head coach at Cincinnati in 2009-18.

Laura Lishness (1987-91): Lishness, from Bristol, was UConn's distributor as the 1980s turned to the 1990s. She had 160 assists and averaged 14.1 points a game as a senior in 1990-91, when UConn reached the Final Four for the first time. Lishness has one of the five triple-doubles in UConn history — 14 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists against Providence on March 5, 1989. She scored 1,303 career points, 39^th in program history. An All-Big East First Team player in 1990-91, she led the Huskies in assists each of her final three seasons and finished with 531. Lishness is one of three players with 13 assists in a game, just behind Paige Bueckers’ 14 and Nika Muhl’s 15.

Rebecca Lobo (1991-95): Lobo was the face of UConn’s first undefeated national championship season in 1994-95, and the program’s first national player of the year. One of the most dominant post players in the sport’s history, she averaged 19.3 points and 11.2 rebounds as a junior and 17.1 points and 9.8 rebounds as a senior. Lobo had a UConn-record 59 double-doubles in her career, after which she was a centerpiece – with Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoops — of the WNBA’s kick-off marketing campaign. Lobo, the most outstanding player at the 1995 Final Four, played six professional seasons and retired in 2003. She was an inaugural inductee to the “Huskies of Honor” program in 2006. In 2017, she became the first UConn basketball player inducted to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame. She is 11th on UConn's all-time scoring list with 2,133 points, third with 1,268 rebounds and tied for first, with Renee Najarian, in rebounding average at 10.1 a game.

Shea Ralph (1996-01): Ralph scored 1,678 points, 19th on UConn’s all-time list, despite a college career greatly disrupted by knee significant knee injuries. She sat out the 1997-98 season and her UConn career ended prematurely when she torn an ACL, for a third time, in the 2001 Big East championship game. Ralph was the leading scorer, averaging 14.3 points a game, for a UConn team that won its second national championship in 2000, when she was the Big East player of the year, a First Team All-American and most outstanding player at the Final Four. Ralph averaged a career-high 16.7 points as a sophomore in 1998-99. She spent five years as an assistant at Pittsburgh and 13 years as an assistant at UConn before being named Vanderbilt coach in 2021.

Jen Rizzotti (1992-96): The junior point guard landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated after UConn’s victory over Tennessee in the 1995 national championship. As a senior in 1995-96, she was national player of the year. Rizzotti, of New Fairfield, averaged 11.1 points and 4.7 assists in her four years at UConn. She finished with 1,540 points, now 25^th in program history, and 637 assists, which is third. An inaugural member of the “Huskies of Honor” program, Rizzotti was a two-time ABL All-Start with the New England Blizzard before playing five seasons in the WNBA, winning two titles with the Houston Comets. She was the coach at Hartford in 1999-2016, reaching six NCAA Tournaments, and the coach at George Washington in 2016-21. Rizzotti, an inaugural member of the “Huskies of Honor,” is now president of the Connecticut Sun.  

Nykesha Sales (1994-98): No UConn player has scored more points in a game than Nykesha Sales, who had 46 as a senior against Stanford on Dec. 21, 1997. Sales, of Bloomfield, remains the program's top in-state recruit. She quickly became a key member of the 1995 national championship team as a freshman. Her 1997-98 scoring average of 20.9 is the third-best in program history. Sales finished with 2,178 points, then the best in program history, after the infamous staged basket that allowed her to pass Kerry Bascom after sustaining a season-ending injury. Sales, now tied with Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis for sixth on the scoring list, went on to play nine years in the WNBA for the Miracle/Sun. She is now an assistant at Georgia, having followed coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson from Central Florida, where she had been an assistant since 2016.

Kara Wolters (1993-97): Wolters, a sophomore on UConn's first national championship team, scored 2,141 points in her career, 10th all-time at UConn. She is third on the program's all-time blocks list with 370. Wolters was the Huskies' scoring leader as a junior (18.8 points a game) and senior (17.0), and the team's leader in field goal percentage each of her four seasons. She was the Associated Press national player of the year in 1996-97, making the third straight season a UConn player had won the award (Rebecca Lobo, Jen Rizzotti), and a two-time First-Team All-American. Wolters won Olympic Gold in 2000 and played six years professionally, four in the WNBA. She was an inaugural inductee to the “Huskies of Honor” program.