Unstoppable UConn women set NCAA record

HARTFORD – The Fightin’ Irish put up quite a fight Monday night, they trailed by only three at halftime, but it wasn’t enough to overcome harassing defense and timely shooting by the UConn women’s basketball team.

On March 8, 2010 the Huskies won a record-setting 71st consecutive game, the longest winning streak in Women’s Division I Basketball history.

The record-setting win came in the semifinals of the Big East Championship tournament at the XL Center in Hartford, a 59-44 victory over Notre Dame, ranked sixth in the national polls.

Nursing a 25-22 lead at the start of the second half, the Huskies continued their tenacious D, holding Notre Dame to 22 as they had in the first half.

Then the semi-dormant UConn offense – it was their lowest first-half score in the past three years – lit up the board as they slowly pulled away from Notre Dame and into basketball history.

Senior Kalana Greene, held to only two points in the first half, ended up scoring 15, one less than Tina Charles’s game-high 16.

The senior center also snared a game-high 17 rebounds.

Maya Moore netted 11 points and Caroline Doty chipped in with nine – but those nine were big, all in the first half when the Huskies offense was struggling.

Notre Dame, led by Skylar Diggins with 10 points, proved a formidable opponent for this historic game, and made the Huskies earn their spot in history. The Irish refused to go away, hung close, played hard, stayed within striking distance… until 9:44 left in the game, when Moore made a “we-ain’t-going-to-lose-this-game” three-pointer from somewhere near the State House.

Moore launched from a spot that was closer to the UConn bench than it was to the three-point line.

In fact, Moore was so close to Auriemma after the ball left her hand, the two could have exchanged a high-five had they wanted to, with the score now at a comfortable 49-35.

By the way, the win moves UConn into the Big East championship game Tuesday night against West Virginia, which defeated Rutgers 56-49 in the second game of the doubleheader played at the XL Center.

More important than breaking records

While the fans and the media made the wining-streak the focal point of the season, almost relegating the conference title to a sidebar, head coach Geno Auriemma kept it all in perspective.

After watching his team massacre Syracuse, 77-41, in Sunday’s quarter-final game, the Hall of Fame coach said he wasn’t even thinking about the winning streak.

“This may be hard for the average fan to understand, but I really don’t think about things like that,” Auriemma said.

Concentrating on side issues such as scoring titles and winning streaks, inevitably gets in the way of achieving said goal.

Then again, Auriemma has earned the right to take a ho-hum approach to this whole winning-streak thing because, lest you forget, he’s been-there, done-that.

After all, the record that was broken Monday night was held by Geno Auriemma’s teams, circa 2001-2003.

Comparing the four teams involved (each winning streak ran over two seasons), Auriemma said the team that played the second leg of the first streak “was more offensively challenged” than the current team, which has consistently beaten opponents by double digits.

Recruitment is the key

Asked to offer reasons for this exciting string of Husky success, All-American forward Maya Moore said the key is in recruiting.

“Coach goes after competitive players, because when you get to Connecticut, it’s very competitive, on offense and on defense,” Moore said.

Ever the realist, Auriemma knows all streaks must end, but hopefully this one will end with a whimper and not the bang that abruptly stopped the first streak at 70 when Villanova stunned UConn in the Big East Championship game of 2003. (Ironically, both streaks were set in the semi-final game of the Big East tournament, the first in 2003 and now this one in 2010.)

“This streak is going to end eventually but when it does, I want it to be the right way,” Auriemma said. “Not because one of our players got hurt or fouled out, but because in the closing minutes of the game, we had our best team out there and the other team simply played better than us.”

Posted March 9, 2010

Video clips from March 8, 2010 game by Vito J.  Leo

Geno Auriemma on setting record for consecutive wins in NCAA Div. I women’s basketball.AVI

Maya Moore on winning 71 straight games