It’s been hard to talk about the UConn women’s basketball team the last several years without either trumping up nonsense issues or falling back into the “they’re just so great” trope. How do you talk about a team that’s this much better than everyone else without it getting trite and boring?
This week, 538’s Hot Takedown’s podcast attempted to do that. Discussing whether anyone (specifically South Florida) can beat UConn this season and whether a perfect season is more impressive than four consecutive titles. They got the right answers eventually (no, duh, and four consecutive titles, respectively) but their reasoning seemed flawed to us here at ADB headquarters, so we thought we’d offer our perspective.
First, I should say that we’re big fans of 538. They do incredible work with stats, and regularly compile stats on the UConn women, which is fantastic considering how little stat work gets done on women’s college basketball. There’s math and sports, and it’s super nerdy, so obviously we appreciate and enjoy it.
However. After listening to the recent podcast, I was left wondering if they’ve actually, you know, watched UConn play basketball? Because stats are important, but they only tell some of the story.
The question of whether the four consecutive national championships is more impressive than a perfect season seems really obvious. The UConn women have already had a perfect season five times. Five. No player has ever won four national titles. Not Diana Taurasi. Not Maya Moore. It hasn’t happened. Ever. Breanna Stewart and Moriah Jefferson will be the first players to graduate with four national titles on their resume. That sentence alone should make clear that four titles is the more impressive of the two feats. (Yes, I know UCLA men’s basketball won more than four in a row back in the late-60/early-70s, but freshmen didn’t play then, so no four-year players, and, also, I think we all know how that happened.)
On the podcast, the reason the participants gave for the titles being more impressive is that they’re facing better teams in the tournament than they are all year round. While that’s true to a degree, this season they’ve already faced two top-10 opponents (Ohio State and Notre Dame) and two other ranked team (No. 11 Florida State and No. 23 DePaul). And they’ve only played eight games so far this season. Oh, and they still have South Carolina waiting for them. The Huskies play the best opponents they can, and if they’re killing them it’s because they’re that much better. Not because the other teams aren’t among the best in the nation. And, really, playing a 16 seed and an 8/9 seed as the first two games in the NCAA isn’t any more difficult than playing anyone on their conference schedule, so I think that reasoning is flawed.
But there’s more to it. A perfect season means you have one incredible year. One great roster. Four titles means the team managed to string together four consecutive great rosters, or, as in the case with this team, a recruiting class with possibly the best women’s college player in the history of the game. That means no injuries (see: Shea Ralph, Svetlana Abrosimova and Nykeesha Sales) to your star players, or illnesses at unfortunate times, or any other random thing that can go wrong in sports. For four years. It seems impossible because so far it has been.
Hot Takedown used a clip of Debbie Antonelli from the Dishin and Swishin podcast in which she says that she believes South Florida will beat UConn this season. Antonelli’s reasoning is that because South Florida played UConn three times last year losing first by 42, then by 23, and finally by 14, this year they’ll get enough chances to actually get by UConn. While she does say she’s going out on a limb, Antonelli believes that South Florida will manage to beat UConn in one of the (likely) three match-ups between the teams this year and end the win streak. Nonsense. Utter and complete nonsense. To the credit of the 538 team, they immediately dismissed the notion, dropping this tasty stat: all but 15 teams in women’s college basketball would be favored to lose to UConn by more than 25 points. Plus, South Florida has already dropped two games so far, to St. John’s and Baylor, two teams that surely would end up as Husky chow if they faced UConn.
Based on what we’ve seen so far this season, 538’s stat appears to hold up. Even with a limited bench due to injury and illness, UConn still managed to beat No. 11 Florida State by 24 points. And what probably doesn’t appear in the stat sheet is that Geno isn’t playing his best roster for the entire game. Stewart is averaging 31.5 minutes per game. That means she’s not in the game for almost an entire quarter. And she’s STILL putting up circus numbers: 23 points per game on 63 percent shooting with 4.5 assists and 8+ rebounds, with 3.3 blocks and 2.4 steals per game on the defensive end. Barring injury, the idea that any team will disrupt UConn’s title chances is just laughable, and for the fourth consecutive year, that’s pretty damn impressive.
