It isn't hard to tell when Geno Auriemma is irritated. It's probably more difficult to tell when he's not.

At any rate, it was obvious last season that the water started boiling pretty quickly when people would say they didn't understand how Connecticut was having backcourt trouble when it had both Svetlana Abrosimova and Shea Ralph, they of the superstar pedigree.

	Svetlana Abrosimova averaged 16.6 points and 6.6 rebounds in '99.

Just have one of them play point guard. Simple as a making a Play-Doh pancake.

"Arrrggghhh ...."

What's the problem, coach?

"People don't understand," Auriemma would say, "it isn't that easy."

And after UConn lost a very entertaining-to-watch game at home to Tennessee in January, it was fairly obvious to even the dimmest light on press row that the Huskies' lack of a real point guard had hurt them.

At UConn for the postgame interviews, they set up several school desks facing a table where the coach sits, so it's sort of like taking notes during a lecture. On that particular day, a depressed Professor Auriemma began to ramble a bit near the end, and the reporters -- especially those with Eastern time deadlines -- began to fidget.

Then Auriemma stopped, either to catch his breath or ponder further, and a big group got up and raced off to start writing their stories.

With that, the session ended. But Auriemma sat at that table just a little while longer, and you could see his thoughts without him speaking: "As good as we are, it might not be enough."

Well, as we know now, it wasn't. But it didn't take a matchup with Tennessee or Louisiana Tech or Purdue at the Final Four to show that. It took a sharpshooting Iowa State team with exactly what UConn didn't have -- an experienced true point guard -- to show it in the Mideast Regional semifinals.

"There wasn't a time in that game where I thought we were going to lose," UConn guard Shea Ralph said of the Huskies' loss to the Cyclones.

You understand her sentiment, because that's how top teams are supposed to think, but ....

Maybe what the Huskies needed on the floor that afternoon in Cincinnati was someone who did contemplate the idea of losing -- and also think about exactly what UConn was going to have to do to stop Iowa State.

	“	Whatever Sue does, that's what we're going to have to live with. If she has a great year, we have a chance to be a great team. ”
		— UConn coach Geno Auriemma, on point guard Sue Bird

Thing is, talking to Ralph both after that game and just recently, you get the feeling that the Huskies considered the battle against the Cyclones secondary almost to the battle each UConn player was waging against herself.

As Ralph said, "Nobody played up to what we should have."

Now before you think Ralph isn't giving the Cyclones credit, understand that most good players on most good teams tend to think like this: "If we do what we're supposed to, we'll win."

It's coaches, not players, who stay up all night worrying about what the other team is going to do.

And the coaches try to feed as much information as they think is relevant/necessary into their players' heads about the opposition.

Certainly, Auriemma mentioned the Cyclones' 3-point shooting ability once or twice to his team before the game. However, once the game starts, the coach must rely on the players to process that prior information along with what's actually going on out there. And point guards often are the best at doing this and then giving on-court instruction.

Iowa State had that kind of player in Stacy Frese. UConn, with point guard Sue Bird on the sidelines most of last season with a knee injury, didn't.

The Huskies had a lot of good rowers, no coxswain.

"Svet and I were called upon at different times to play the point," Ralph said of last season. "That was putting us out of our element. As much as we needed it, Svet and I aren't point guards."

Which is exactly what Auriemma was talking about after the Tennessee loss -- what he was talking about for a lot of the season, in fact.

Now he has Bird back and says, "Whatever Sue does, that's what we're going to have to live with. If she has a great year, we have a chance to be a great team."

Would Bird have changed the outcome against Iowa State? Obviously, that's impossible to say.

Big 12 followers, especially, had seen the Cyclones get into one of their shooting frenzies where it seemed as if they could hit 3-pointers with their backs to the basket. Iowa State was -- and is -- a very good team.

But would Bird have run the Huskies' offense better against Iowa State? Well, Tweety Bird might have helped on that day.

Ralph said the Huskies aren't dwelling on the loss to Iowa State, yet added, "You can still see it in people's eyes. It was devastating to us."

But was it also educational? With the Huskies' perimeter game and the super-talented inside trio of Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams, once again the Huskies are formidable.

Will Bird -- and the contributions of freshman point guard Kennitra Johnson -- make them unbeatable?

Well, considering the strength of some of their Big East foes, plus the fact that they play Tennessee twice, the Huskies don't seem really good bets to make it through the season unscathed.

But they can deal with that. What they want, of course, is to not get tripped up again on the road to the Final Four.

Ralph says the Huskies learned a great deal last year, but says of the 1999 Final Four: "Tennessee -- I don't know why they didn't get there. And I don't know why we didn't get there."

The literal answer is that both teams' shooting was abysmal in their NCAA Tournament losses.

But Ralph is saying this rhetorically. And, actually, she does know.

"There are a lot of teams now that can beat you," she said. "If you let that slip out of your mind, you might be letting your chance slip away.

"You know, every year with the men's Tournament, there's this Cinderella team that rises to the occasion and beats somebody people don't think they will beat. And that's why people love to watch it. Sometimes I think that they think our tournament is too predictable, but you could see from last year that the tables are turning.

"I hope that continues. It makes it more fun."

Well, as long as the upsets happen to some other favorite, right?

"Yeah," Ralph said. "I don't want it to be us again."

Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.