When you hear the words “women’s college basketball,” the first thing that comes to mind probably isn’t the WNBA, or even the NC State women’s basketball team, in the midst of an entertaining season, fighting to make the NCAA tournament.
No, the first thing that most people think of is the University of Connecticut and its absolute domination of women’s college basketball over the past few years.
What exactly qualifies as domination? Well, for starters, the Huskies have won three-straight national championships and look to be well on their way to number four. Just as impressive, they have won 64-straight games, dating back to last season.
If that isn’t enough, take a look at the box scores of UConn’s games this season. Up to this point of the season, the Huskies are 27-0 and have scored 80 points or more in 25 of those games. Four of those games ended with UConn putting at least 100 points on the board (if the timekeeper was still even keeping score).
The vast majority of the team’s games haven’t even been close. UConn leads the nation in scoring offense with 88.6 points per game, and scoring defense with 48.3 points per game given up — an average margin of victory of 40.3 points. Yes, 40, while the next closest in that category was Baylor with a 25-point average margin of victory. Additionally, its largest margin of victory was 80 points against Vanguard. The score was 98-18.
What’s the closest game the Huskies have had this year? Well, they had a couple of disappointing performances, relatively speaking, against No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 6 Maryland, managing to only win by lowly 10 points in each game. Even against the top teams in the country, UConn makes it look easy, proving just how dominant it is.
While I’m sure UConn fans love seeing their team continuously run through every single opponent, at the end of the day, it hurts women’s college basketball as a whole.
I get it: Many people love a dominant champion. But in a sport that lacks the popularity of the men’s game, even fewer people are likely to watch or care about women’s college basketball when they already know the outcome and who will win it all.
The Huskies and head coach Geno Auriemma shouldn’t apologize, nor will they, for their success on the court, but women’s basketball would be much more compelling if anyone, in their right mind, believed other teams had a legitimate shot of winning the national championship.
UConn has been extremely successful for almost two full decades, but the biggest difference between earlier seasons and now is the presence of a serious threat.
For a while, with Pat Summitt at the helm, the University of Tennessee provided that threat, resulting in many matchups in the final four between the two teams. During those days, the matchups were compelling because fans knew that either team could win on any given night.
That is what women’s college basketball lacks and desperately needs right now.
One of the reasons we love sports is the fact that we don’t know what is going to happen when two teams meet. We hold on to the belief that any team can win on any given night. The unordinary becomes expected in the basketball world, giving March Madness its charm.
Women’s college basketball is lacking that unpredictability that we have fallen in love with because the Huskies stand alone at the top.
Ask yourself this: Are you likely to watch women’s basketball now, as it currently is, or would you be more inclined to watch if you believed more than just one team could win it all?
