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How Big Is The UConn Women’s Basketball Win Streak?

With a win tonight, The Connecticut Huskies will set the record for the longest consecutive NCAA basketball winning streak with 89 straight wins, eclipsing the UCLA men’s basketball teams of the 1970s. Huskies coach Geno Auriemma made headlines after their most recent win when he argued that people don’t respect his team’s record because of the gender of his players.

“The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men’s record, and everybody is all up in arms about it,” he said. Does Auriemma have a legitimate point?

It’s not their record to take: “Here’s a news flash for Auriemma,” says Mark Potash in the Chicago Sun-Times: “That’s a men’s basketball record. You coach a women’s team. A women’s team can’t break a men’s record any more than a men’s team can break a women’s record.” While this winning streak is quite an accomplishment, it’s a “charade” that Auriemma is caught up in. In truth, “there are probably 10 high school teams in the city that could beat the Connecticut women.” How good are they, really?

Give them their due: “Competition is competition, and there is no minimizing the fact that this team has vanquished all comers week after week, year after year,” says a Chicago Tribune editorial. It’s not like they have a “soft schedule” – they have repeatedly beaten top ten teams. The Huskies win because they have “relentlessness” and toughness unmatched by others. Staying this good for so long is a true feat.

This is bigger than a wins mark: “This is the stealth sports accomplishment of a young century,” says The Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Gay. For this team, “wins accumulate and challengers are vanquished with such regularity that the public reacts with little more than a passive nod. The UConn women are amazing.” It’s time for all of us to “pay tribute,” regardless of the UCLA record. Just appreciate seeing “a great team try and do something magical” that we very well “may never see again.”

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