The Big East

Sorry, I keep meaning to keep up this blog and then I get distracted. This time I'll really do it. What inspires my post today is something personal and, I suppose, trivial. The only major league team in Connecticut is a WNBA franchise, which has a small following and doesn't get much attention. But the biggest thing going in sports in the state is actually the UCONN women's basketball team. The UCONN men have had off and on success -- one year both the mens' and women's teams won the NCAA championship, which I believe is a unique accomplishment. But the women have been consistently at the top of their sport, under head coach Geno Auriemma.

In my adult peregrinations, I have lived in the Philadelphia area, D.C., and Boston as well as Connecticut. One unifying institution in all of those places was the Big East conference. This was mostly a basketball conference -- a lot of the schools didn't even have football teams, although Miami and Boston College, which back in the day had powerhouse programs, did belong. When I lived in D.C., Big East conference member Georgetown was a leading program under John Thompson. In Philadelphia, it was Villanova. In Boston, B.C., which actually won a men's national championship once. And of course UCONN. Other teams were also nearby. St. John's and Seton Hall in the New York area, and Providence College. Note that these are mostly Catholic schools but that's pretty much irrelevant.

Regardless of whether your local team was a contender in the NCAA tournament, or their top players were destined for the NBA, the Big East as a league still mattered. Fans got to know all the teams and the players and cared who won in the Big East. In a strange way it created some continuity in my life.

Then the UCONN trustees decided that the school needed a Division 1 football program. That seemed like a very bad idea at the time. Because the Big East wasn't much of a football conference, I believe Miami and B.C. already left. In any case, so did UCONN, which joined the Atlantic Coast Conference in anticipation of being a big deal in foobaw. Well, you can guess what happened. The football team has never risen above abject and embarrassing awfulness. Meanwhile, the ACC has exactly one women's basketball team that even has a chance of making the NCAA tournament, and that's UCONN. That means that every single ACC game they have ever played has been a cupcake. They typically won by doubling or tripling their opponent's point total. They never lost a conference game.

Not only is that no fun, it also means that by the time they got to the NCAA tournament they had little experience against quality competition and bad habits developed by clobbering teams that couldn't match them athletically. As a result, they developed a pattern of losing in the semi-finals where they would encounter well-matched opponents for the first time.

So now UCONN has rejoined Big East basketball, and the women have had their first two conference games. I was hoping this would mean more serious competition, but so far I'm sad to say it hasn't, both games have been blowouts. But they have Villanova tomorrow so we'll see what happens. They're an exciting team with, get this, 6 freshmen. (Yes, it's a sexist and obsolete term, but it's the one they use. Take it up with the administration.) At the end of the blowout against Xavier, Auriemma had 5 freshmen on the floor, but one of them is top recruit Paige Bueckers, who looks like she'll live up  to all the hype, and they have three or more others who look like they'll be solid if not great players. Meanwhile, they have very strong sophomore and junior players, and a real chance for a national championship, despite not having a single senior on the team. 

We'll see what happens. Hopefully Big East women's basketball has some legitimate competition.