What can be said for the UConn Lady Huskies that has not already been said. As of Wednesday, April 1 2010, the Lady Huskies have won a women’s record of 76 straight games, breaking their own record of 70 wins from 2001-2003.
This article is meant to be written as an achievement and a congratulations to something that might never happen again, unless of course, UConn does it again. By the Huskies winning the NCAA Tournament, the win total will tally up to 78. All that is required after that is the 2010-2011 Huskies to go 11-0 and they will total 89 wins, surpassing UCLA’s total from 1971-1974. Their last regular season loss came in February 2008 against Rutgers. UConn’s last loss period was in the 2008 NCAA championship game against Stanford.
It has been over 700 days since their last loss. That is incredible. In that time, the Detroit Lions have lost 30 games. The last time the Lady Huskies lost, President Bush was still in office. OJ Simpson was not quite in jail for armed robbery and kidnapping. WISER was not completely changed, nor our student e-mail.
As if this was not impressive enough, UConn has won all 72 games by an average of almost 33 points per game. Every game. Not a single game of those 72 were won by less than 10. All of the games were over by halftime. Just imagine if you are a team going in to play UConn, and are giving your best effort to be that team that ends the streak. And in a quick two hours, you just lost by at least 33 points. As if that was not impressive enough, UConn has played a ranked team twenty-two times and have won all of them by an average of 26 points per game.
Something that head Coach Gino Auriemma does is considered unusual by most coaches takes place in practice. What Gino does is play six on five, seven on five, sometimes eight on five. This is not just for the offensive team. There are other times in practice where it is five on six, five on seven, etc. this way both sides of the ball have an advantage. As crazy as this sounds, what this does is give the team with the disadvantage the mentality of working harder. After working their tails off in practice and being put at a disadvantage whether on offense or defense, it makes playing in a game that much easier.
Five on five in a real game is simply way to easy for these ladies. Besides making them great basketball players and a perfect team, Gino has also turned them into women ready for the world. Some of them, like Maya Moore and Tina Charles, will have careers in the WNBA. Others will graduate top or near the top of their class and ready for the real world.
These women are doing something special not just for a sports record and a top story on SportsCenter, but also for themselves. This record, especially with UConn doing this a second time is slowly putting women’s sports on the map. These women players are very good but simply do not get the exposure. If UConn can get to at least the 89, and who knows, maybe one day 100, the WNBA should hopefully gain the most from this. All this should do is prove a few things. One being that Gino Auriemma is as good of a coach if not better than Bobby Knight, Mike Krzyewski, Dean Smith, etc. Second being that the women should finally get a pay raise in the WNBA to the point where a second job outside of the season is not necessary.
Props go out to the UConn women. The Huskies will have me backing them hoping this streak can continue as long as possible.