Yep. I agree completely. Players usually want to test themselves against the best. Why on earth wouldn't you want to play UConn at least once during the season? The teams that have had the most success against UConn (ND, Stanford, Tennessee in the past, occasionally Rutgers) have usually played UConn at least once during the regular season. It's so obvious during the tournament that teams that haven't faced that type of defensive and offensive pressure take a while to adjust to it and normally don't recover. (I'm looking at you, Kentucky.)
Well, in the first place, UConn can only play a certain number of the really good teams. Using this year as a sample, since UConn always seems to play in a 3 game tourney - which only counts as 2 games, which gives you an "extra" game - there are maybe 9 games available. Stanford / Notre Dame / UCLA / Duke / South Carolina all fit the bill that Geno is discussing, and DePaul and St. John's (Maggie Dixon opponent in any case) are actually of a level to benefit from playing UConn and no conceivable knock on Geno for playing them by anyone. That leaves 2 shots - UC Davis and Creighton - as the only "openings" in this year's group for someone to get into. And I know Rutgers wants to play UConn in the future, she wanted to play them this year.
I wouldn't knock those who don't play UConn, per se, rather, and I think it is more what Geno is getting at, is the weak schedules played by many power teams. The teams at the bottom of the power conferences will not really benefit from out-of-conference beat-downs, although they should challenge themselves by including some teams expected to be better than them in their schedule; they will get the beat-downs in their own conference. It is the teams in the middle of the power conferences and above that often do not play teams that will challenge them, including elite teams.
Some random "weak" schedules:
Penn State - WNIT (fwiw), but only other Power 5 opponent is Syracuse. Best of 7 other opponents USF?
NC State - playing Minnesota in the ACC/BTen challenge, and either Purdue/Texas Tech in a tourney.
Iowa State - playing Iowa (duh). No one else from a power 5, Cincy may be best other opponent
USC - opened with South Carolina, OK State is only other challenging team.
Actually, most of the better teams HAVE upgraded from the schedules of a few years ago, but these are teams that either are or want to be thought of as major teams, and they have not upgraded their schedule.