Though Unlikely, Connecticut Women Still Can Lose

Two questions are floating about as Connecticut prepares to break its own NCAA women's record for consecutive victories in Sunday's Big East Tournament semifinals -- and yes, it's safe to assume the Huskies will get there.

Is this the best team ever?

Is there anyone who can beat them?

The answers are no and yes. In that order.

First things first. Connecticut is a fabulous team led by two spectacular players in Tina Charles and Maya Moore. They are mentally tough and incredibly skilled and their focus in both tight situations and in blowouts never wavers. In fact, it seems the closer the game, the better they get -- not that we've had more than fleeting moments to see it thus far.

That is a testament to them and it's a testament to coach Geno Auriemma and the way he channels his team's talent and motivation and blocks out the things that distract.

But they are dominating a year in women's basketball in which many of the country's brand-name programs -- Duke, North Carolina, Maryland, Notre Dame, LSU, Oklahoma, even Tennessee to a degree, are not quite what they have been in the past.

In other words, the competition isn't as good.

And how do you argue against Connecticut's 2001-02 team, whose record is likely going to fall on Sunday, as the best team of all time? It was a team made up of four fantastic seniors -- Sue Bird, Ashja Jones, Swin Cash and Tamika Williams -- and a super sophomore in Diana Taurasi.

That team featured four of the top six picks in the WNBA Draft that year, and five starters who scored at least 1,000 points in their careers.

As for question No. 2., the list is short on teams that could pull off an upset of Connecticut and write an unexpected ending to this season. It's down to perhaps only two teams: Nebraska and Stanford.

No one has seen much of Nebraska outside of the Big 12. The Cornhuskers are the great mystery and surprise of this season, a team loaded with seniors who won 15 games last year.

But they are led by a standout fifth-year senior in Kelsey Griffin, can score from all five positions on the floor, are active on the defensive end and would make an interesting matchup for the Huskies if for no other reason than it would pit the country's two undefeated teams, and no one can quite predict how it would go.

The other team, of course, is the No. 2-ranked Cardinal. Conventional wisdom says they are a rung below Connecticut on the ladder, with everyone else in the nation on the rung below that.

We've got a head-to-head matchup as a point of reference here. The two teams played in Hartford on December 23. Stanford traveled cross-country at the end of an eight-day span -- in which it had already beaten Duke and Tennessee -- led at halftime and then got dominated in the second half by UConn.

Losing by 12 in what was a home game for the Huskies meant that Stanford got tossed on the scrap heap with every other team that Connecticut had beaten this season.

But the Cardinal don't belong there. This is a team with wins over Rutgers, DePaul, Gonzaga and the aforementioned Blue Devils and Vols. This is a team that won nine in a row before facing Connecticut and has gone on to win 18 in a row since. This is a team with three bonafide stars in Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen and Nneka Ogwumike, who are all having All-American seasons.

This is an experienced team that knows this exact scenario -- losing to Connecticut, 66-54, with many of these same players at a tournament in the Virgin Islands and then coming back to upset the Huskies in the Final Four in Tampa, 82-73.

And giving Tara VanDerveer, a master at preparing her teams with thorough scouts and sound game plans, a second shot at any team in the same season is an intangible not to be discounted.

Does that mean that the Cardinal will upset the Huskies on the way to an NCAA title? Not necessarily, but there remains a possibility, one that that too many people may be discounting as they get blinded by the prospect of 71 straight wins and counting for UConn.