Would college women’s basketball be better off if Connecticut’s domination ends?
Arguably today’s most dominant program in sports is on the verge of its fourth consecutive national championship and NCAA-record 11th. Coach Geno Auriemma’s team is 119-1 since a loss to Notre Dame on March 12, 2013. That was when Breanna Stewart — who will be favored for her third player of the year award and a fourth Final Four most outstanding player as a senior — was a freshman.
The Huskies have been criticized for their success unlike any other team in any sport, mainly because of the lack of parity in women’s basketball. For example: Since UConn’s last loss three years ago, it has beaten every opponent by double digits, and over 100 of those games have been by 20 points or more. Now it’s riding a 72-game winning streak into Monday’s Elite Eight, where the Huskies will face No. 2 seed Texas (31-4) in Bridgeport, Conn. (7 p.m. ET, ESPN). The winner goes to the Final Four next weekend in Indianapolis.
If there were no UConn, would all the best players go to another program? Notre Dame? Baylor? South Carolina? That’s not how anyone should be thinking, says 2014 WNBA No. 1 draft pick Chiney Ogwumike, whose Stanford team beat UConn in her freshman year to end a 90-game winning streak — the record in college basketball, two games more than John Wooden’s UCLA teams from 1971 to 1974.
“UConn has to be there,” Ogwumike said. “People need to stop complaining about UConn’s dominance, because it’s not them, it’s us. It’s the rest of the field that has to rise up. We do have some great teams that fly under the radar and, because of (UConn’s) dominance, we can’t talk about them as much. But I think UConn basketball belongs in history for every reason they’ve earned it.
“Anybody who hates on UConn isn’t being realistic to their work ethic. But I do think players and teams need to look at them and use that as motivation. We can’t be settling for days off. We have to fight to get to where they are.”
Added Seattle Storm guard and UConn alum Sue Bird: “A lot of people talk about UConn and how they’re killing women’s basketball. But in my opinion, aren’t they showing you what it should be like?”
Consider this: Don’t other top women’s basketball programs have as much talent as UConn? There are hundreds of players coming into college to play basketball every year, and UConn gets a fraction of that talent. So what happens to it? And why haven’t they been able to prevent the Huskies from league domination?
Mississippi State, a No. 5 seed from the Southeastern Conference, had its shot on Saturday and lost 98-38.
“Quite frankly, if you look at their team and my team, it’s not often that you can get your top three players to go 1-2-3 in the WNBA draft,” Ogwumike said. “If you look at any other team in college basketball, is there a team that could have its players do that? That to me is an advantage, and it’s a recruiting asset as well.”
The Huskies could have three seniors be the top three picks of this year’s draft. If it’s not the first three, they are at least projected to have three go in the top five.
Stewart will likely go No. 1 overall, followed by three-year starting point guard Moriah Jefferson and forward Morgan Tuck, should she declare for the draft (she has one more year of eligibility due to a medical redshirt she received in her sophomore year).
Coaching has a lot to do with this, and Auriemma can be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Nick Saban, Bill Belichick and Mike Krzyzewski. Just like on those coaches’ teams, there’s a different standard at UConn where the No. 1 priority of winning national championships is understood.
“There’s a culture there and you buy in,” Bird said. “The minute you step on campus as a freshman and you learn from your upperclassmen, they kind of show you the way and you know there’s a certain way to act, a certain way to practice, you know there’s a certain way to speak to people. There’s just a certain standard there that you’re expected to live up to and if you don’t, you’re kind of like the oddball.”
