UConn hoops run fuels multiple streaks
Geno Auriemma and the UConn Huskies are on an unbelievable run.
No, not the 109 straight wins. Or the four consecutive national championships.
Try this: They haven’t lost backto-back games in almost a quartercentury. That’s 883 straight games without consecutive losses.
Think about that for a minute. No current UConn player was even born the last time this program had a losing streak. And that mark is safe for at least another year, which has Rebecca Lobo thinking about popping the Champagne with her former teammates — the ones who lost two in a row.
Lobo was a sophomore on the 1992-93 UConn team that suffered consecutive defeats. The Huskies had a three-game and two-game losing skid that season.
“They should trot us out at halftime next year at one of the games and recognize us,” Lobo joked. “That’s what it comes to. The only thing they can honour that’s new and different. Maybe that team is the black sheep of the UConn family.”
Maybe without that failure, the success UConn has had since wouldn’t have been so great. UConn has lost only 57 games since.
That team went 18-11 — the last UConn squad not to win 20 games — and was in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament, an unheard of thought for a team that has since won 11 national championships.
UConn’s 1992-93 season ended with losses to Miami in the Big East Tournament semifinals and Louisville in the first round of the NCAAs.
“We just couldn’t handle it. We were not good enough,” Auriemma said. “That was the bottom line. Louisville was way better than us. Providence was better than us. We just weren’t good enough. We were lucky to make the tournament. We just had too many freshmen and sophomores playing too many key roles. We just weren’t ready. Then obviously, the next two years ... well, you know.”
They won the first of 11 titles two years later, going undefeated for the first time in school history.