Treble hunting: The women's college basketball teams who truly won it all
Which women's basketball teams won everything they could win in one season? UConn, of course, but who else? And who could win a treble in April?
The treble is European club football’s most difficult single-season accomplishment. Top teams build squads deep enough to compete in round robin leagues, single-elimination domestic cups and a tourney comprised of elite continental competitors.1
The opportunity for league, cup and European honors has been available since 1956.2 Real Madrid came close to the first treble in the third year it was possible by finishing first in Spain, winning the European Cup and losing the Copa del Rey final to Atlético Bilbao.3
Celtic from Scotland won the first treble in 1967. Dutch football’s legendary Ajax squad did it in 1972.4 PSV Eindhoven became the second Dutch treble winners in 1988. Manchester United snuck two goals past Bayern Munich in injury time of the 1999 Champions League final to earn England’s first treble, and Pep Guardiola captured all three major trophies in 2009, his first season in charge of Barcelona.
The one-treble-per-decade pace quickened after that: Inter Milan from Italy in 2010, Bayern Munich from Germany in 2013, Barcelona again in 2015, Bayern again in 2020, and Manchester City from England in 2023. In 67 opportunities, teams have won all three trophies 10 times.
The quest for three titles doesn’t fit American sports leagues well. Professional teams on this side of the Atlantic can win their division, their conference and their league championship, but those aren’t considered distinct competitions.5
The treble translates best to college basketball. Teams compete in league play, single-elimination conference tournaments and the national tournament. The latter is the goal but truly winning it all includes three different trophies that matter to schools, players, fans, coaches and history.6
I started wondering about trebles this year when South Carolina completed an undefeated regular season against Tennessee, then held off the Volunteers again in the SEC tournament (more on that below). Could Dawn Staley coach the dominant team of the season to all three championships? They’ve been a top-tier program for years now. Have they won all three before?
So I did some digging into past treble winners in women’s college basketball. Last year’s champ, LSU, went 34-2 but South Carolina claimed the SEC league and tournament. South Carolina won the national title in 2022 but lost to Kentucky in the SEC tournament final. The most recent treble winners: 2021 Stanford (35-2) from the Pac-12.7
Here’s what I found out about treble winners in women’s college basketball history, and a look at who could add to the list in April.
Queens of the treble — and it’s not close
The NCAA started a women’s tournament in 1982 when the Connecticut Huskies were not good. Three seasons later, UConn hired Geno Auriemma. At the end of the first decade of Auriemma’s tenure — eight winning seasons, six NCAA tournament appearances, and runs to the Elite Eight and Final Four — the Huskies won the Big East, the conference tournament and their first national title.
Out of 41 total women’s national tournament opportunities and 38 seasons under Auriemma, UConn has won eight trebles.
1995 (35-0): Thirty wins and undefeated, both program firsts.
2000 (36-1): Split regular season meetings with the Tennessee Volunteers, then beat them by 19 in the title game.
2002 (39-0): Preseason No.1. Final No.1. The first championship of a three-peat, but the Huskies suffered Big East tournament losses in each of the next two seasons.
2009 (39-0): And…
2010 (39-0): This is the second pair of back-to-back undefeated seasons in college basketball history. 1972 and 1973 UCLA on the men’s side has the other.
2014 (40-0): And…
2015 (38-1): And…
2016 (38-0): The triple-treble run. Due to conference changes, UConn won the American Athletic Conference, the AAC tournament and the national title for three straight years. That lone loss was in overtime to Stanford, which they avenged in the 2015 title game. The 2017 squad lost on a buzzer beater to Mississippi State in the Final Four, two wins short of a fourth consecutive treble.
Eight of UConn’s 11 national championships have been trebles. One fifth of all women’s college basketball seasons since the inception of the national tournament have ended with UConn claiming all three major trophies. Auriemma’s done it in just under a quarter of his campaigns in charge.8
Bears. Bears. Bears.
Kim Mulkey started coaching at Baylor in 2000 and left for LSU 21 years later. In that span, she led three national title teams. All three won trebles.
The 2005 Bears went 33-3. The 2012 Bears went 40-0. That’s the Brittney Griner squad, and one of three non-UConn undefeated seasons in NCAA women’s basketball history. The 2019 Bears went 37-1.
Every seven seasons, Baylor won all three major trophies. No other program has more than two trebles.
Twice to the Summitt
You probably wondered how many of Pat Summitt’s Tennessee national championship teams won trebles. She was the first college basketball coach to reach 1,000 victories, and the Volunteers have won eight national titles, second-most behind UConn’s 11.
Of those eight, two were trebles. They were the first and last titles in a late-90s three-peat, sandwiched around the only women’s national champion with double-digit losses.
The 1996 Vols avenged in-season losses to UConn in the Final Four and Georgia in the title game. The 1998 edition had no losses to avenge at 39-0. Chamique Holdsclaw led both teams in points and rebounds per game.
Three trophy one-timers
2021 Stanford Cardinal (35-2, Pac-12): Tara VanDerveer has been coaching at the Cardinal since 1985. Her first treble happened in her 35th season in Palo Alto. She came close eight other times.
Stanford lost national title games in 2008 and 2010 after winning the Pac-10 and the conference tournaments. They lost in the Final Four in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2022. And we’ll get to why her two other national championship teams couldn’t capture the treble below.
2017 South Carolina Gamecocks (33-4, SEC): Dawn Staley’s second Final Four brought the Gamecocks their first national title. This treble happened after eight seasons under Staley’s leadership, and the program will compete with Stanford to be the next women’s team to jump into the ranks of multiple treble winners because the other one-timers aren’t national powers now.
1999 Purdue Boilermakers (34-1, Big Ten): They lost at Stanford by one point in game three. That’s it.9 Carolyn Peck departed from coaching the Boilermakers after her second season to build the Orlando Miracle for the WNBA, which is now the Connecticut Sun.10 The only national title for a Big Ten women’s team is this Boilermaker treble.
1993 Texas Tech Red Raiders (31-3, Southwest Conference): Sheryl Swoopes, everybody. Hall of Famer, gold medalist, WNBA champion and MVP, college treble winner. Coach Marsha Sharp led the Red Raiders for 24 seasons and won three-quarters of her games, eight conference titles, five conference tournaments and a treble in her one national championship appearance.
1988 Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (32-2, American South Conference): The Lady Techsters’ only losses were away games in February by a combined six points.11 They won the American South and the conference tournament in their first year in the conference. Leon Barmore had already guided Louisiana Tech to three Final Fours as an independent, and they lost treble opportunities in the Final Four five times after 1988.12
1986 Texas Longhorns (34-0, Southwest Conference): The first undefeated season in women’s NCAA history. Texas defeated two-time champion USC and ended Cheryl Miller’s college career with a title game victory. Jody Conradt won 790 games as coach of the Longhorns and reached the Final Four with a treble available again in 1987 and 2003.
“Immediately after the USC game, it just hit me that we had accomplished something no other team had,” Conradt said. “There will be a champion crowned every year, but the undefeated championships will form an elite group.”13
1985 Old Dominion Monarchs (31-3, Sun Belt): Marianne Stanley connects the NCAA we know with the previous era. She played at Immaculata College during their successful run in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women during the 1970s. She won two AIAW national tournaments as ODU coach, took the Monarchs to the NCAA Final Four in 1983 and successfully earned three trophies for the first time two years later.
The Have Nots
2020 Oregon, South Carolina, DePaul, Dayton, Maryland, South Dakota and Samford: COVID-19 caused the cancellation of March, events and basketball. These seven squads ended the season with a conference title, a tournament crown and no shot at a national title. Realistically, we were looking at Sabrina Ionescu and the Ducks adding another program to the list of treble winners or Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks jumping into the multiple-treble tier.
1990 and 1992 Stanford Cardinal: They won their conference and the national title, but the Pac-10 did not hold a conference tournament for them to win. The conference dropped their men’s tournament in 1990, then resurrected it and installed a women’s tournament in 2002. Plenty of conference champs stumbled in the single-elimination gauntlet against familiar foes, so there’s no guarantee that VanDerveer’s first treble would’ve happened much earlier than 2021. The Cardinal went 32-1 and 30-3 in these two banner seasons, so it’s easy to imagine them cutting down one more set of nets.
1983-84 Southern California Trojans: USC claims conference titles in the Women’s Western Collegiate Athletic Association for each year they won the national title with Cheryl Miller and Cynthia Cooper. The records are spotty, and I can’t find any indication of a WWCA tournament ever existing, but USC finished on top of the conference at 13-1 both years.
The AIAW Era National Champions: Before the NCAA ran women’s college sports, the AIAW ran regular season schedules, regional tournaments and national finals for women’s basketball.
Immaculata College won the first three AIAW titles from 1972-74, including a 20-0 campaign in the middle.14 Delta State won in 1975 (28-0), 1976 and 1977. UCLA won in 1978. Old Dominion won in 1979 and 1980. Louisiana Tech went 34-0 in 1981. Rutgers won in 1982, the only year that the AIAW and NCAA held overlapping tournaments before the latter took over completely. I couldn’t quite tell which of those teams officially won the regular season, and the regional tournaments feel like a blend of conference tournaments and the early stages of the modern NCAA bracket. But it felt wrong mentioning the other winners who didn’t get a treble opportunity without including the best teams from the era before the NCAA included women’s sports.
Who’s next?
We’ll handle the many theoretical possibilities first, and then the two favorites — one looming over the other 67 teams and one lurking just behind the leaders.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance: Just over a quarter of the 2024 national field won their leagues and tournaments. Based on their seeds, they are unlikely to cut down the nets in April.
#15 Maine (24-9, America East)
#10 Richmond (29-5, Atlantic 10)
#12 Florida Gulf Coast (26-4, Atlantic Sun)
#14 Eastern Washington (29-5, Big Sky)
#11 Middle Tennessee (29-4 Conference USA)
#9 Princeton (25-4, Ivy League)
#13 Fairfield (31-1, Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference)
#15 Norfolk State (27-5, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference)
#12 Drake (29-5, Missouri Valley Conference)
#10 UNLV (30-2, Mountain West)
#16 Sacred Heart (23-9, Northeast)
#16 Holy Cross (19-12, Patriot)
#14 Chattanooga (28-4, Southern)
#12 South Dakota State (27-5, Summit)
#13 Marshall (26-6, Sun Belt)
#14 Jackson State (26-6, Southwest Athletic Conference)
#15 Cal Baptist (28-3, Western Athletic Conference)
Now there are two of them: Realistically, we’re looking at a pair of powerhouse programs potentially adding a treble to their legacy in a month.
South Carolina is 32-0. Kamilla Cardoso visited the bank to beat Tennessee in the SEC semifinals and keep the treble in play. Cardoso will miss the Gamecocks tournament opener due to a suspension for fighting after shoving Flau’jae Johnson in South Carolina’s win over LSU in the SEC final. A 38-0 record after the next six games would make South Carolina the fourth program with an undefeated season, and holding up the national championship trophy would make them the fourth program with multiple trebles. They’re the top overall seed and the best bet to truly win it all.
And then there’s UConn.15 The Huskies, back in the Big East, won the league and the tournament. They enter the national fray as a 3-seed at 29-5 after bouncing around the teens in the rankings for most of the season. It’s been seven seasons since UConn claimed a title. They won’t be favored to add a ninth treble, but we do keep coming back to Connecticut.
This question turned into a research rabbit hole this week. I’ll check on the men’s treble winners later in March. Also, I’m working on Part 2 of The Snell Game (a cubist view of game 6 of the 2020 World Series), along with some other projects in process.
Want to contribute to the Thrill Shot curiosity journey? Become a paid supporter and I’ll dig into a team, sport or competition of your choice in the future. I’ve got some intriguing items on that agenda (kick volleyball, sports with animals, etc.).
England and Scotland also hold league cups, so those teams compete in more than three competitions each season. Winning the league cup would count toward a treble, but not The Treble. It’s not just any three trophies. There are also the season-opening yearly clashes between the league and cup winners in each nation, and the previous winners of the Champions League and the Europa League. So many trophies possible, but The Treble is league title, cup victory and conquering the continent. And clubs from other regions can also win their league, cup and continental competitions; Europe’s treble is the most well-known.
Quick note on the dates: European football seasons begin in the fall and end in the spring. Adding in all the previous years seemed obvious and unwieldy. I’m using just the final year because that’s when each club completed the treble quest.
Real Madrid have won the European continental title 14 times and have zero trebles. I knew both of these facts going into this story, but it was still shocking to put them next to each other. They won the first five European Cups, but only won the league twice and the cup once in that span. They’ve won La Liga 35 times and the Copa del Rey 20, but all three trophies have yet to overlap in one season.
So close to a triple treble. Three European titles from 71-73, but second in the league in 1971 and cup runners-up in 1973.
I know, Major League Baseball doesn’t use the word “conferences,” but that’s how the AL and NL function now.
League play used to be true round robin, and it was beautiful. But conferences contain too many teams for home-and-home series between every team now.
Dates again. College basketball starts in the fall and ends in the spring, so I’m using the latter for the same reasons as my note about the football teams.
The exact numbers: 19.5% and 23.7%. And I opted not to single out individual players in the season notes because I don’t know UConn basketball well enough to know when to include names beyond the major ones. The list of treble winners you probably recognize includes Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash, Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart. Even including this list here makes me a little uncomfortable because I feel like I’m leaving out some incredible contributors. I’ll put a note in my ideas list to revisit the players from UConn’s Auriemma Era in the future.
I’m not officially keeping track, but the number of times one of these teams lost to Stanford is intriguing.
Somehow, we keep coming back to Connecticut.
These treble-winning squads don’t lose by much when they falter. So many close games in the L column throughout my research.
1989, 1990, 1994, 1998 and 1999. If one or two of those runs goes differently, we’re all much more aware of Leon Barmore than we are now.
I found quote this in multiple secondary sources, but I couldn’t pin down the original context.
I did discover that Immaculata’s first championship would not have been a treble because they lost a regional tournament game but made the national finals as an at-large team, No. 15 out of 16. I couldn’t find much else about the regular seasons, so I’m not sure how many of these national champs also topped the regular season standings and won their regional tournaments.
See, I told you.