Best of all
Huskies win 91st straight, topping own NCAA record
DALLAS — Winning 91 in a row, that’s nice.
Now Geno Auriemma and his Connecticut women’s basketball team can focus on the real goal — a return to Dallas to play for a fifth straight national championship.
The Huskies broke their own NCAA record with a 91st consecutive victory Saturday in an 88-48 romp over SMU after scoring the game’s first 21 points.
“Even afterward, there’s a feeling of accomplishment, they feel like they’ve done something significant,” Auriemma said. “But there isn’t this overthe-top screaming and yelling as if we just won a national championship.”
While his team has stayed on an even keel, Auriemma told them the streak “was maybe more significant than winning a national championship.”
Connecticut (16-0, 4-0 AAC) broke the record of 90 consecutive wins Auriemma’s team first set more than six years ago. They matched that mark with a 65-point rout of No. 20 South Florida last Tuesday.
“I’m not taking [it] for granted at all this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of,” sophomore Katie Lou Samuelson said. “Now we can really just focus each game at a time, and not have to worry anything if we’re keeping it up or not.”
The four-time defending national champion Huskies haven’t lost a game since falling in overtime at sixth-ranked Stanford on Nov. 17, 2014.
Their first 90-game winning streak broke the Division I record of 88 straight wins by the UCLA men’s basketball team and famed coach John Wooden. That UConn streak also started after a loss to Stanford, in the 2008 national semifinal game, and ended with another loss at Stanford on Dec. 30, 2010.
While the Huskies don’t play Stanford in this regular season, they do have wins over second-ranked Baylor, third-ranked Maryland and sixth-ranked Notre Dame — the latter two on the road.
Auriemma said his team’s focus has been on getting in position for another national title shot.
“All of sudden you wake up one day, like today, and you realize that along that way, I can’t believe we did this,” he said. “It’s a lot, 91 games is a lot.”
Samuelson scored 28 points. Naphessa Collier added 19 points and 16 rebounds for UConn.