UConn Huskies Streak Comes to an End at the Hands of Stanford
The Connecticut’s women’s basketball team’s extraordinary 90-game winning streak finally came to an end in just about the same manner that it started, with the exception that it unexpectedly finished far before the start of this year’s Women’s NCAA Tournament. Playing in its 91st game without a loss, the Huskies proved to be no match for the Stanford Cardinal, as the Stanford women took an early lead in the first quarter and never looked back. Consequently, instead of adding one more game to their record streak, the Huskies run concluded as Stanford took the game in a 71-59 victory at Maples Pavilion, an arena where Stanford has played 52 home games without a loss.
The last time that the Huskies gave up a loss was April 6, 2008, when a tenacious Stanford Cardinal team beat the UConn Huskies in the Final Four of the 2008 NCAA Tournament semifinals, and effectively dashed the Huskies hopes of walking away with the 2008 National Championship trophy that year. The Connecticut team responded to the 2008 Stanford loss by starting the next season by going on a record-breaking, 90-game winning streak that spanned the entire 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons, with both seasons seeing the Huskies go 39-0 and walking away with both their 6th and 7th National Championships. The winning streak continued 12 games into this year’s season before UConn was finally beaten tonight by a similar Stanford team that played with the same type of tenacity that dashed UConn’s hopes in 2008.
Despite tonight’s loss, Geno Auriemma’s Huskies have still done more to bring women’s basketball into the public eye than any other team in NCAA history, as UConn has proven to be a leader in producing both Olympic-caliber and WNBA stars throughout the course of its history. Under the tutelage of Geno Auriemma, who was hired as the team’s head coach in 1985, the UConn Huskies have won seven NCAA Division I National Championships, advanced to 11 Final Fours in the NCAA tournament, and has won over 30 Big East Conference Championships. For most teams, that would be enough, but the Huskies took a great deal of pride in their 90-game winning streak, and the looks on the faces of the women following the game belied their shattered hopes to carry it any further.
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