Connecticut Women Make the Game Fun

MILWAUKEE —  There is symmetrical beauty about a basketball fastbreak. There are angles to be negotiated, a choreography of five players, 10 feet, 10 hands, one basketball, all needing to travel 94 feet while moving past five other players and their 10 feet and 10 hands. And the goal is to put the basketball into the basket.

The University of Connecticut women run the fastbreak better than any college team right now. They ran one Monday night against Old Dominion and the ball touched all five Huskies but never touched the floor. The final pass came from point guard Sue Bird and was sent to senior forward Asjha Jones and dropped, by Jones, sweetly off the backboard and into the basket.

It was as if Old Dominion had no defenders on the court. The Huskies ran so smoothly you couldn’t hear their feet touch the ground. It was a single play in a first half of near perfection.

The Connecticut women have made it to the Final Four. The Huskies beat Old Dominion, 85-64, in the Mideast Regional final. This was their 37th victory. They have not lost. There is pressure on these women and so much hype.

Since they lost in the NCAA semifinals a year ago, they have universally been expected to win the national title. And yet, the Huskies are having fun. They accept the pressure.

“That’s what we play for,” Bird said.

Added Jones: “That’s why you come to UConn.”

All five of their starters have been named first-, second- or third-team All-American. Bird, a senior, was called by Old Dominion Coach Wendy Larry, perhaps the best college female point guard ever. “I thank God,” Larry said Monday night after Bird had scored a career-high 26 points and added 11 assists, “that there is a WNBA, and I can watch her play at the next level.”

Domination can be numbingly boring in sports. Some have complained that these Connecticut women have made the sport no fun. They are winning games by an average of 37 points. Only one victory, 59-50, over Virginia Tech, was not by a double-figure margin. Most games are well over by halftime.

And yet it’s worth spending time watching Connecticut. Just as it was fascinating to watch Pete Sampras when he was playing his best tennis and winning Wimbledons, one after another, with hardly a challenge, because it was beautiful to watch a superb athlete and master of his sport who hit shots and played points as no others had done, it is exhilarating to watch these Connecticut women play basketball.

“That was so fun,” guard Diana Taurasi said. “You know how cool it feels to have things working exactly like you do them in practice?”

The Huskies made 13 consecutive field goals to start the game, and there were assists on 12 of them. The ball was barely touching the floor. “The best thing,” forward Tamika Williams said, “was that we didn’t have to hear coach’s voice once.” Auriemma is a screamer, a jumper, a foot-stomper. For the first 20 minutes Monday night, Auriemma didn’t leave his seat. He sat back and smiled.

A halftime lead of 55-33 will make a coach smile. The Huskies had shot 75% from the field (21 of 28) and 62.5% from three-point range (five for eight). “That first 20 minutes,” Auriemma said, “was as good as I hope to see a team play. I couldn’t be prouder.”

The five starters were all high school stars. They came from California (Chino’s Taurasi) and New York (Bird), New Jersey (Jones) and points in between (Swin Cash from Pennsylvania and Williams from Ohio). They came to Connecticut and put aside their egos and put forward their talents.

“Everybody wants to pass first,” Auriemma said. “That’s really special.”

The unselfishness is unusual in a group of stars. When high school All-Americans gather, there are almost always petty jealousies. There are friends and family who might want to know why Taurasi is taking all those three-point shots or why Bird didn’t get the ball to Cash instead of Jones. That’s how it is so often in men’s college basketball. There are too often AAU coaches and street agents, fathers and brothers all whispering to the former high school star that the star isn’t getting enough.

These women, though, have come to Connecticut to become better players and to win basketball games and to get degrees. Auriemma has to yell at Bird because she doesn’t shoot enough.

He will say, on a night when the opposing coach said his team was “perfect” for 20 minutes, “that my team must be the only team in the country that can’t run the pick and roll. And why can’t we get any dribble penetration?”

Auriemma was making a joke, right?

No, he wasn’t, and you knew immediately what the Huskies will be working on in practice. And none of them will complain.

It is that respect for the coach, and for the game, for learning and improving, that has made the Connecticut’s women’s team more fun to watch than any in college basketball right now.

To see Taurasi throw a pass from her hip and imagine the strength that takes and then to see her spot up and shoot a 24-foot three-pointer and make it seem as easy as a layup; to see Bird back-tip a missed shot, just softly, into the hands of Williams for a layup, to understand what court sense Bird must have and what body control Williams must have, watching these performances makes the Huskies’ opponents seem irrelevant.

Joining Connecticut in San Antonio will be Duke, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Connecticut will play Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols. It will be a fine matchup, and if the Vols can stay within 10 points of the Huskies, it will be impressive for Tennessee. It is hard to imagine Connecticut losing.

But it won’t matter and will be good for the game if everyone else watches and learns. Just as the Huskies did.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at [email protected].