Was UConn’s Final Four run just a warm-up for next season?

CLEVELAND — In the almost 40 years that Geno Auriemma has been UConn’s head coach, he can remember exactly two instances when the Huskies went on a postseason run that defied all logic.

The first was in 1991 when UConn made its first Final Four.

“There was absolutely no way to predict or explain how that happened,” Auriemma said. “And yet it was the beginning of our program as it exists today.”

The second was these past three weeks in this year’s March Madness.

“I even told the players during pregame introductions, I said, ‘This is the first time that we’ve come here where it feels like we’re the visitors. Where it feels like we’re actually the underdogs and no one expects us to win,” he said. “We did talk about (how) getting here was the hardest part. And you appreciate that so much.”

The lasting image from Friday night in Cleveland will almost certainly be Auriemma bent over in anguish, facing his bench, distraught after forward Aaliyah Edwards was called for a moving screen with 3.9 seconds left. UConn was down one point to Iowa and ready to give star guard Paige Bueckers a chance to go win the game with a national championship berth on the line.

The 71-69 loss will undoubtedly haunt Auriemma, who admitted Friday night that the pride he feels from…