UConn Women Set Win Streak Record

Yesterday, the UConn women’s basketball team won its 71st consecutive game, which breaks the women’s record previously held by UConn itself.  This accomplishment prompted many to debate the magnitude of the record.  Here is my take, which was previously written on the blog (February 18th, 2010, “Why the UConn Women are so Good.”)  Please excuse any numbers changes, such as number of consecutive wins, that have accrued since I wrote the entry below.

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Over the past few weeks, many ESPN and other college basketball analysts have been asked, “Why are the UConn women so good?”  The answers have ranged from attributing the success to Geno Auriemma to attributing the success to the team talent and chemistry.  While parts of these answers are correct, there is one big reason why the UConn women dominate college basketball as much as they have, and it hasn’t been mentioned by any analysts to this point.

UConn currently is on a 65 game winning streak, only 5 behind their own record of 70 consecutive wins in the early 2000s.  To win 65 straight games without a single loss, a team needs to be better than the rest of the league.  And not just a little better, the team needs to be leaps and bounds ahead of every other team, so that even on UConn’s worst night, the Lady Huskies would beat another top 10 team.  However, I am not claiming to be the first one to say that UConn is so good because it is better than everyone it plays.  I am arguing how and why they are so much better than everyone else.

I’d like to first establish a parallel between the UCLA teams of the 1970s and the current UConn team.  Each team had multiple consecutive National Championships, UCLA has the longest winning streak in Division 1 Men’s Basketball history (88), and UConn will have the longest D1 Women’s Basketball winning streak before the end of the season.  John Wooden and Geno Auriemma are two of the most respected coaches in their fields.  Finally, and most importantly, the men’s game had not evolved in the 1970s to the point it has now, and the women’s game has yet to evolve.  What this means is that when John Wooden and UCLA were winning consecutive championships, there was not nearly the pool of high school, international, and other talent to draw from that there is today.  The elite players were numbered, and all of these players went to UCLA.  This left every other college basketball team at a severe disadvantage, as no other team was nearly as talented as the Bruins.  However, in today’s men’s game, the high school talent and international talent has exploded across the country.  4 star recruits dip to as low as the top 200 players in the country.  That is enough to fill 20 full teams, and with most teams only giving out about 3 scholarships on average per year, that means that as many as 67 teams can recruit 3 four star or better recruits per year.  This expansion of high school talent has dramatically leveled the playing field in college basketball.

So when people say, “No one will ever win 88 consecutive games like the UCLA Bruins did,” they are most likely right.  But do they know why they are right?  The reason is certainly not that the UCLA team was just better than the teams that play today, in fact, it is quite the contrary.  Many college teams today would absolutely crush the 1970s UCLA team because the talent has increased so dramatically among large parts of the United States.  Therefore, the players are better as a whole than they were in the 1970s, and there are more of these quality players to pick from.  The college basketball playing field has been leveled by this effect, which is the very reason we rarely, if ever, see undefeated season, and rarely see repeat National Champions.

(I realize a big part of the reason we don’t see these accomplishments is also because of players moving to the NBA ahead of schedule.  However, even if these players do stay, other teams are constantly revamping their rosters with talented, All-American high school players.  Teams would rarely, if ever, complete an undefeated full season, and certainly would not win 88 games in a row with the amount of talent that is turned over and obtained each year by a variety of different teams in college basketball.)

Now to apply my above argument to the current UConn women.  The women’s college basketball game now is like the men’s game was in the 70s, if not less evolved.  It is no insult to the women, but the college and high school game is very new to women.  The talent has not expanded across the country, but instead is very concentrated among a few areas and a few athletes.  Therefore, when these athletes have the opportunity to sign with a school, which school are they going to sign with?  Without a doubt, the answer is UConn, and has been for years.  Therefore, UConn every year becomes the UCLA of the 70s.  The team has significantly better players than every other team, and most of its bench players are more talented than the stars of other teams.  When there is such a discrepancy, there is bound to be domination by this team, which is what we have seen for years now out of the UConn women.

By no means am I trying to downplay the accomplishments of the UConn women’s basketball program by saying it is just handed all the best players.  Geno Auriemma still had to build the program up from scratch to be the best in women’s basketball, and to eclipse long-standing Tennessee and Pat Summitt.  I applaud him on that.  He also needed to coach these women to play well together because they were all the best players on their high school teams and didn’t always know how to play as a team.  Therefore, I am not trying to downplay what the UConn women’s basketball program has done.  My point is that AFTER Auriemma did the excellent job of establishing the UConn program as the top program in women’s basketball, the best players started falling into his hands (Again, a great job by him to attract these women by building the program up).  However, Auriemma can’t claim the winning streak as if it were a streak in the men’s game right now.  The women’s game still does not have nearly the depth of players to spread across the country’s programs to level the playing field.  There simply is not enough quality players yet in women’s college basketball so that on any given night, a middle of the road Big East team can beat UConn.  The game simply has not evolved to that point yet, and that isn’t anyone’s fault.

Why the UConn Women are so Good

Over the past few weeks, many ESPN and other college basketball analysts have been asked, “Why are the UConn women so good?”  The answers have ranged from attributing the success to Geno Auriemma to attributing the success to the team talent and chemistry.  While parts of these answers are correct, there is one big reason why the UConn women dominate college basketball as much as they have, and it hasn’t been mentioned by any analysts to this point.

UConn currently is on a 65 game winning streak, only 5 behind their own record of 70 consecutive wins in the early 2000s.  To win 65 straight games without a single loss, a team needs to be better than the rest of the league.  And not just a little better, the team needs to be leaps and bounds ahead of every other team, so that even on UConn’s worst night, the Lady Huskies would beat another top 10 team.  However, I am not claiming to be the first one to say that UConn is so good because it is better than everyone it plays.  I am arguing how and why they are so much better than everyone else.

I’d like to first establish a parallel between the UCLA teams of the 1970s and the current UConn team.  Each team had multiple consecutive National Championships, UCLA has the longest winning streak in Division 1 Men’s Basketball history (88), and UConn will have the longest D1 Women’s Basketball winning streak before the end of the season.  John Wooden and Geno Auriemma are two of the most respected coaches in their fields.  Finally, and most importantly, the men’s game had not evolved in the 1970s to the point it has now, and the women’s game has yet to evolve.  What this means is that when John Wooden and UCLA were winning consecutive championships, there was not nearly the pool of high school, international, and other talent to draw from that there is today.  The elite players were numbered, and all of these players went to UCLA.  This left every other college basketball team at a severe disadvantage, as no other team was nearly as talented as the Bruins.  However, in today’s men’s game, the high school talent and international talent has exploded across the country.  4 star recruits dip to as low as the top 200 players in the country.  That is enough to fill 20 full teams, and with most teams only giving out about 3 scholarships on average per year, that means that as many as 67 teams can recruit 3 four star or better recruits per year.  This expansion of high school talent has dramatically leveled the playing field in college basketball.

So when people say, “No one will ever win 88 consecutive games like the UCLA Bruins did,” they are most likely right.  But do they know why they are right?  The reason is certainly not that the UCLA team was just better than the teams that play today, in fact, it is quite the contrary.  Many college teams today would absolutely crush the 1970s UCLA team because the talent has increased so dramatically among large parts of the United States.  Therefore, the players are better as a whole than they were in the 1970s, and there are more of these quality players to pick from.  The college basketball playing field has been leveled by this effect, which is the very reason we rarely, if ever, see undefeated season, and rarely see repeat National Champions.

(I realize a big part of the reason we don’t see these accomplishments is also because of players moving to the NBA ahead of schedule.  However, even if these players do stay, other teams are constantly revamping their rosters with talented, All-American high school players.  Teams would rarely, if ever, complete an undefeated full season, and certainly would not win 88 games in a row with the amount of talent that is turned over and obtained each year by a variety of different teams in college basketball.)

Now to apply my above argument to the current UConn women.  The women’s college basketball game now is like the men’s game was in the 70s, if not less evolved.  It is no insult to the women, but the college and high school game is very new to women.  The talent has not expanded across the country, but instead is very concentrated among a few areas and a few athletes.  Therefore, when these athletes have the opportunity to sign with a school, which school are they going to sign with?  Without a doubt, the answer is UConn, and has been for years.  Therefore, UConn every year becomes the UCLA of the 70s.  The team has significantly better players than every other team, and most of its bench players are more talented than the stars of other teams.  When there is such a discrepancy, there is bound to be domination by this team, which is what we have seen for years now out of the UConn women.

By no means am I trying to downplay the accomplishments of the UConn women’s basketball program by saying it is just handed all the best players.  Geno Auriemma still had to build the program up from scratch to be the best in women’s basketball, and to eclipse long-standing Tennessee and Pat Summitt.  I applaud him on that.  He also needed to coach these women to play well together because they were all the best players on their high school teams and didn’t always know how to play as a team.  Therefore, I am not trying to downplay what the UConn women’s basketball program has done.  My point is that AFTER Auriemma did the excellent job of establishing the UConn program as the top program in women’s basketball, the best players started falling into his hands (Again, a great job by him to attract these women by building the program up).  However, Auriemma can’t claim the winning streak as if it were a streak in the men’s game right now.  The women’s game still does not have nearly the depth of players to spread across the country’s programs to level the playing field.  There simply is not enough quality players yet in women’s college basketball so that on any given night, a middle of the road Big East team can beat UConn.  The game simply has not evolved to that point yet, and that isn’t anyone’s fault.

These are the main reasons that the UConn women are as good as they are relative to the rest of women’s college basketball right now.  I felt that I needed to clear up the misconceptions, because many college basketball analysts seem to miss the point.