When we say dynasty, what pops into your mind? The Bulls? The Yankees? Bad soap operas?
Well, how about a women’s basketball team? No? Am I exposing your innate gender preferences, your enormous lack of respect for the opposite sex? Or are you a woman? Were you actually thinking about women in the first place? Am I confusing the hell out of you? Are you wearing any pants?
Well, before you answer no, let us get back to the point. We checked out the UConn women’s hoops team. Yes, we’ve seen the highlights on television, the ticker tape parades in Storrs and way too much Rebecca Lobo. But we’ve never seen them alive and kicking ass, and what a sight it was.
Our first thought in watching the Huskies warm up in McDonough was “Wow, they’re short.” But this is the woman’s game, and as it turns out, that don’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that the Huskies, perhaps the most dominant women’s basketball team of all time, wanted to extend their winning streak to 66 consecutive games. 66! Yes, women’s college basketball is about as imbalanced as English Premier League soccer in terms of talent, but I dare you to name more than a handful of teams that have reached such dominance over the last century. Thinking? Yeah, thought so. You can’t.
The game was a wash, of course, as it usually is against UConn. They won by 40. The only highlight for Georgetown was Rebekkah Brunson, who blew up in the second half and even nailed a couple of threepointers.
What was most impressive about the Huskies, though, was their teamwork. Their defense was sick, their ability to spread the floor was remarkable, and their offensive strategy was as tight and automatic as Phil Jackon’s triangle offense. And despite turning the ball over nearly 20 times, they nearly doubled the Hoyas’ score. Their leading scorer, Diana Taurasi, spent most of the night on the bench, so four other players picked up the slack and scored in double figures (though Taurasi still had 17 points and five assists).
Despite our lack of knowledge about women’s hoops, the game was a pleasure to watch. It displayed fundamental basketball at its finest, and had the intensity and excitement that we love so much about the men’s game. To watch the most dominant team in its sport work its magic firsthand is pretty damn memorable. So, believe it or not, the best basketball that this campus has seen in the last three years passed through McDonough last night, and they weren’t wearing jock straps.
Not that we checked.
