Columbus, Ohio — In the last week or two, it was nearly impossible to engage in even a little light reading about the women’s college basketball season and not run into some prose on UConn's historic quest to win a fourth consecutive national title.

When the leading figures on these recent title-winning teams gathered for the first official practice last month, certainly they knew what could be awaiting them over the next 5½ months.

“They are not going to have any problem with it,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said of returning starters Breanna Stewart, Moriah Jefferson, Morgan Tuck and Kia Nurse, “I think they want it, they welcome it. All four, I don’t think they are hiding or shying away from it, but it hasn’t come up since practice started either so we don’t get in a circle and say ‘OK guys, remember four in a row, let’s go.’ Nobody is talking about it.”

There could be a good reason for the lack of focus on the big picture.

That same quartet served as key contributors on a UConn team beginning its quest for a third consecutive national title with a pair of games in California a season ago. The season opener against UC Davis went off without a hitch, but then the mighty Huskies returned home left to wonder how in the world did they end up losing in overtime to Stanford.

Facing a talented and aggressive Ohio State team, also on the road on Monday (5:30 p.m., ESPN2), the Huskies want to make sure this is one bit of history that doesn’t repeat.

“This is our goal, but we can’t really focus on it all season. We can’t really say ‘oh we are going to win four, we are going to win four,’” said Tuck, a redshirt junior forward. “We are going to make sure we are preparing so we are focusing on each day to make sure we can get to the point where we can win.

“We didn’t have the right mindset (at the beginning of last season). I think after that game we made a lot of changes and I think those changes led us to being successful that season. I think November last year really put us in the right direction, and if that didn’t happen, I don’t think we would have won last year. When we lost, it just wasn’t a good feel on team, but I think now there is a better feeling on the team. I think we all have the right mindset this year.”

With no disrespect to graduated seniors Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Kiah Stokes, their losses aren’t expecting to leave the same void that resulted with All-Americans Stefanie Dolson and Bria Hartley graduated.

The Stanford game was the second regular-season game without the duo that had their fingerprints on everything that went right for the Huskies during back to back national championship seasons.

“I think they are much more mature in some aspects,” Auriemma said. “The practices that we have had since we have started have been, for the most part, much more mature. There hasn’t been as many practices that we had last year at this time that you just shake your head and go ‘these guys don’t know what they are in for.’ I think last year going into a game without Stefanie and Bria, I think was a real shocker for them because they always had somebody they could count on to bail them out. They thought they could just roll in there and no problem. They found out ... I think we are in a better frame of mind, better situated right now to play a game like this early in the season than we were last year for sure.”

Ohio State not only goes into the game with one contest already under its belt, but one on the road against a South Carolina team that some people think could have the pieces to end UConn’s championship reign.

Third-year Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff is eager to see how his squad reacts in what figures to be an electric atmosphere.

“Everything they do and how they go about their business, they set the bar for women’s basketball,” McGuff said. “The thing that they do better than anything is they create a culture where the kids play extremely hard, they play together, they have great chemistry. Then if you add the talent that they add to it, you look at this team with Stewie, Moriah Jefferson, Morgan Tuck, all those players they do all that stuff better than anybody else. They play hard, they play the game the right way. They are really fun to watch on offense. It sometimes sounds simple ‘create great culture, you recruit great kids’ but in 2015 that is really hard to do but they have found a way to do it better tan anybody else. They pass on a lot of talented kids that just don’t fit what they do and it seems to work for them, they have the world chasing them. They do what they do and they have done it better than anybody else.”