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If a group of guys are sitting around talking and one asks, “Hey, did you see that women’s college basketball game last night?” the initial response isn’t an uproar of “Yeah dude, did you see that one play?” or “Yeah, that was sick!” Instead, you’d receive suspicious stares that suggest you’re clinically insane for paying attention to a female sport.
But it just so happens that a team of women – not men – have pulled off one of the greatest accomplishments in college sports. I speak of the Connecticut women’s basketball team. The Lady Huskies haven’t lost a game in 750 days. Their last defeat was to Stanford in the national semifinal on April 6, 2008. Since then, the team has achieved two consecutive perfect seasons of 39-0. According to my math, that’s 78 wins in a row. Yet they get back-seated to most other sports strictly because they are women.
The Connecticut women are only 10 wins shy of tying the NCAA record of 88 straight, set by the UCLA men’s team from 1971-1974. But their astounding streak has been overshadowed in the sports world by “more important things,” like Tiger Woods’ oopsie-daisies and John Wall shimmies.
The only difference between the feat of the 70s Bruins and this Lady Husky team that one word: Lady.
The Connecticut women deserve more credit for their unfathomable feat. Since the 1970s, there have only been two back-to-back champions and one unbeaten team in the men’s game. Perfect seasons just don’t happen in modern-day men’s basketball. Imagine Duke not dropping a game in the last two seasons. The accomplishment would undoubtedly be hailed as the greatest feat by the greatest team in college basketball history.Yet now that UConn has pulled off this inconceivable task, and we barely hear a peep.
Coverage this month has focussed too much on athletes’ personal lives, NASCAR and everyday MLB, rather than giving legitimate props to the Lady Huskies for achieving two straight perfect seasons.
The neglect starts with the underappreciation of UConn head coach Geno Auriemma.
Retired UCLA men’s coach John Wooden won 81 percent of his games over 40 years, piling up 885 wins and only 203 losses. He was arguably the sport’s greatest coach, having lifted 10 national championships. But what about Auriemma?
He has won 85 percent of his games in 24-year career, having accumulated 160 more wins than Wooden did in his first 24 years as a coach. Auriemma has won seven national titles, been to 11 Final Fours and captured 15 Big East championships.
But if you say the name Geno Auriemma, people may think you are casting a Harry Potter spell before they think of the women’s basketball coach.
To put the Connecticut women’s dominance into perspective, let’s compare them to the 2007-2008 Kansas Jayhawks, one of the most balanced collegiate teams in recent memory. Their season ended with a national championship and a 37-3 record. Their average win margin was 19 points and they shot 50 percent for the season, a feat that hasn’t been reached by any other national champion in the 2000s.
This doesn’t even compare to the Lady Huskies and what they’ve done the last two years.
In their 78-game span, Connecticut shot 51 percent and won every game but one by double digits. Their average margin of victory was 32.7 points. This dominance is basically unheard of in modern sports. Most teams are hard pressed to win by 30 a couple times per season. Connecticut averaged it over the span of two seasons.
I was on the East sophomore basketball team this year and we started 10-0. Though we didn’t finish the season undefeated, I learned a thing or two about what it takes for the perfect season. In order to maintain stay undefeated, a team needs three things: consistency, team play and drive.
Connecticut has all of these to a tee.
UConn has gone 78-0 since April of two years ago without missing a single beat. They have only won one game that was decided in single digits, and that was the championship game this year. This shows their consistent play and ability to avoid a mid-season slump two years running, a rarity in the game of basketball.
One thing I love about UConn is how they play as a team. They are extremely unselfish: four players on the 2010 team averaged in double digits. The team also dished 19.5 assists per game. This shows me team play. Assists are passes that lead to a bucket, and every single player on UConn this year averaged at least one a game.
Then there’s drive. During a halftime interview of the Lady Huskies’ Big East tournament game against Notre Dame this year, Auriemma called their offensive performance “the worst of the season.” They were winning by 19. That is the kind of pursuit of perfection that can lift a team and motivate them to get even better. If you are up 19 but your coach is ticked off, you know your team can do extraordinary things.
The Lady Huskies are so good that the day after they completed their second straight perfect season, there was talk on ESPN asking, “Should UConn disband their program because of dominance?” and “Is it fair for UConn to be winning like this?” Analysts across the nation were actually suggesting that UConn’s dominance was unfair and unjust.
The fact that these outrageous questions are even being posed, whether analysts are serious or not, is a testament to how amazing the Lady Huskies are. These questions have never been asked about a men’s team, have they?.
As a fanatic of basketball and a player myself, I admire the fact that UConn has such a dominant program. Sure, people can make the argument, “Men’s basketball is entirely different, there’s more parity and anyone could beat anyone on a given day.”
To an extent, I agree with that. Many say that this dominance would never be achieved at the men’s level. But I believe it all evens out. The UConn women are playing other women, just like men play men. So it’s clearly taken something special for the Lady Huskies to pull off an accomplishment as great as this.
Some say that it isn’t even fun to watch UConn play because of their dominance. This brings up an interesting thought. I believe UConn is a tremendous example of basketball at its finest. They are a deep team that hustles on every play like they are down by 30 rather than up 30. In games that I’ve been losing by more than 20, my opponent usually gets sloppy and just shows off. The Lady Huskies play the entire 40 minutes without getting too cocky.
The UConn ladies are chasing UCLA’s record of 88 consecutive wins, a milestone they can smell by now. But even when they surpass 88 – and yes, they’re going to do it – I don’t expect them to get the publicity they rightfully deserve. When they passed the previous women’s record of 70 unbeaten, no one thought twice about the accomplishment.
The Lady Huskies are without a doubt one of the most impressive teams in college basketball history. It’s a shame that they have been overshadowed by other storylines just because they are women and aren’t respected in a male-dominated sports world.
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