I had a choice: Tape the Big East Championship game pitting rivals Connecticut and Rutgers or a new episode of “The Gilmore Girls.”
I’m as much a “Girls” addict as I am a women’s basketball junkie. I can’t get enough of the rapid-fire repartee between Rory and Lorelai, just as I rarely tire of the rebounds, box-outs, fast breaks, floor burns and must-win emotion of college basketball in March.
I suppose I wouldn’t have had this dilemma if I were not the luddite that I am. No, I don’t have TiVo or DVR. So I had to choose: women’s basketball or “The Girls.” I set the VCR for “The Gilmore Girls” figuring No. 2 UConn would blow out No. 19 Rutgers. Again. And I didn’t want to see that. Again. I didn’t want to see Geno Auriemma’s cocky smirk. Again. I’d watched the Huskies embarrass the Scarlet Knights, 70-44, just on Feb. 26. I didn’t need to see that kind of whupping again. It’d be worse than a rerun of the “Knights of Prosperity.”
After all, Connecticut had been playing its best basketball of the season, perhaps even better than the other presumed No. 1 seeds, Duke, North Carolina and Tennessee, who’d all suffered upsets in the past several days. And while Rutgers, after a shaky, injury-plagued start to the season, had won 12 of its last 14, the two losses had come against Connecticut. I didn’t want to see another one.
No, I don’t like UConn. I like Tennessee. And you can’t like them both. It’s in the NCAA rulebook. I don’t have the kind of bile-filled hatred that a Yankee fan has for that American League team that plays in New England. I respect the program Auriemma has built, and I’m awed by the skills of the players he and his staff have recruited. I just don’t like the team. Never root for them. Well, I would if they were playing Penn State with its homophobic coach, Rene Portland.
I’ve grown tired of watching Connecticut crush overmatched opponents. If they come out on top after a close, hard-fought contest, fine. I love a good game. But I didn’t think the Big East Championship would be down-to-the-wire, fantastically stomach-churning matchup that the SEC and ACC championships, missing their tops seeds, had been.
I was wrong. Though I got some giggles from the Gilmores (the dialog just hasn’t been as gut-busting since creator/writer Amy Sherman-Palladino left), I missed Rutgers’ first Big East Championship win, 55-47.
Luckily, I was able to watch some of the game while pretending to contemplate headlines on my computer at work, albeit without sound, and saw Rutgers clamp down with Stringer’s trademark “55” defense and dictate the pace of the game.
It wasn’t pretty, but no game played the way Stringer wants it played is. It’s low-scoring, gritty, half-court execution, and it forced Connecticut to crumple under the pressure. They committed 16 turnovers to Rutgers’ six. Neither team shot well, both hovering around 34 percent. And the New York star-watch was a little disappointing. For UConn, Christ the King’s Tina Charles, a shoe-in for Freshman of the Year, was plagued with foul trouble and tallied only 8 points and 5 rebounds in 29 minutes of play. Rutgers’ Epiphanny Prince played the full 40, but the 100-plus-scoring Murry Bergtraum star managed only 9 points. Kia Vaughn of the Bronx scored 10 points and pulled down 8 boards.
Both teams are young – not a senior between them – and Connecticut played like it. Earlier in the season, it was Rutgers who was playing young. They’d so disappointed Stringer that she locked them out of their locker room, took away their jerseys and made them earn them back.
So the victory was sweet. It was the fourth time Rutgers met Connecticut in the championship. Twice before the Scarlet Knights had won the regular season title, only to fall to the Huskies in the championship. This time, Connecticut had gone undefeated in Big East play – until the final.
“This is so special,” Stringer said. “It was the first time that I cut down the nets. I’m so proud of this team.”
It probably won’t be enough to make Auriemma eat his Rutgers-baiting words – “born miserable and stay miserable,” “downright obnoxious” and “ignorant” – but it’s a start.
Unfortunately, the loss won’t be enough to knock UConn down from a No. 1 seeding in the NCAA tournament, and it might actually help them, having exposed their weaknesses and the things they need to work on. But they’re unlikely to be the overall No. 1, since they’ve lost to all the presumed No. 1s.
The win definitely helps Rutgers, making an argument for a No. 3 seed.
And the game helped me: I’m getting DVR.
Unrelated Gamenote: The 900-win club just doubled its membership. With Texas' win 70-57 over Missouri in the opening round of the Big 12 Tournament, coach Jody Conradt joined Tennessee's Pat Summitt as the only Division coaches -- male or female -- to reach that plateau. Conradt is 900-306 in 38 seasons, with stops at Sam Houston State and Texas-Arlington before her 31 seasons at Texas. Summitt is 940-179 in 33 seasons at Tennessee.