Women Win Big - New Basketball Record

Yesterday Stanford's women basketball finally beat University of Connecticut's team, stopping their winning streak at 90 games... a national record.

I know this is strange - me writing on sports BUT I promise this really is me ;)

And these women are worth reading about.

I would never claim to be a sports expert, but I simply had to write a blog about this story. No need to worry, though, I did my research getting facts from legit sports fanatics!

If, like me, you hardly know a hail Mary from a home run and root for a team based on who the rookie is rather than national standings, you may not have been up to date on these ladies steadily winning and coming closer to the record.

But our athletic-aloofness may not have been entirely our fault because the story was not heavily covered, at least not at first. Christine Brennan of USA Today wrote an article called "Where's the buzz over UConn women's winning streak?" Here, according to her, was the issue:

You name the excuse and it's certain to be attached to the Connecticut women's basketball team as it attempts to tie the 1971-74 UCLA men's team's record of 88 consecutive victories Sunday (2 p.m. ET, ESPNU) against Ohio State, then break the record Tuesday against Florida State.

She points out that if a men's team were coming up on a new record, the news coverage would be excessive and that sports are still not equitable as many assume since women now play many of the same sports men play. Brennan argues that this inequity is evidenced in that imbalance in news coverage as well as the dismissal that these women would only hold the women's record, not the "real" record for uninterrupted basketball wins since they don't play the "same game." 

However, she ends her article with this:

Come up with all the excuses and differences you'd like, but in the end, this should be a conversation about the game of basketball. A college team once won 88 in a row. If another college team wins 89 in a row, isn't that better?

And they were better.

According to The New York Times:

it is the Connecticut women, not the U.C.L.A. men, who now hold the major-college basketball record for invincibility. The Huskies won their 89th consecutive game Tuesday with a 93-62 throttling of Florida State before a sellout crowd of 16,294 at the XL Center, surpassing the 88 straight won by the U.C.L.A. men, coached by John Wooden, from 1971 to 1974.

 BUT, their streak ended yesterday.

Stanford ended UConn's streak last night with a decisive win: 71-59.

The craziest part was that Stanford was the team to end UConn's last streak in 2008. To read  more, check out this article that dubs both of Stanford's wins as "Two Platinum Bookends."

Both Stanford and UConn deserve recognition and some attention for their women's basketball teams. In fact, all of women's sports could use a little more recognition.

After all, women just won big, beating out the boys for the record : )