I popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly a little before 11 Tuesday night (and woke up on Wednesday with a minor version of those precision-drill-between-the-eyes Champagne reminders).
Our girls had done it again. Undefeated national champs for the second year in a row. Seventy-eight straight games without a loss, all but this last ugly grinder by 10 points or more. It was a bizarre game between the two best teams in the country, and the only good thing to say about it is that our team won.
Women’s college basketball is big here. Here’s David Wharton, reporting for the LA Times last week on the beginning of the love affair:
“The road to Storrs runs through small towns and stretches of wooded countryside where the trees are still mostly bare. On a drizzly afternoon with few cars around, it is hard to imagine that day in 1995 when the people of Connecticut lined this route for miles on end, waving flags, cheering as their college basketball team came home with a championship trophy.
“Their women’s college basketball team.”
We’ve gotten a little blasé since then, as championships have piled up—seven of them now—but every game is carried on Connecticut Public Television (except the ones being broadcast nationally), and they’re all covered by the state’s largest radio station as well. Traveling Nutmeggers bless both CPTV’s Hoopstreams and WTIC’s internet simulcasts.
On Tuesday night, the Yankees also beat the Red Sox. This is the only time this year I simply don’t care.