Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="BfromCT, post: 3648131, member: 10542"] This thread has gotten off center except for the last message by Cornell Lt, so an attempt is being made to bring the focus back to why so many love the UConn women. After drafting the post on “How I Cam to Love Women’s Basketball,” I went back to look at some of the replays for the 1994-95 season. They are available for the Martin Luther’s Day Tennessee game, January 28 game against Kansas (tape of poor quality), two of three Big East tournament games, and the entire NCAA tournament - a total of 10 games. CPTV televised the two Big East games and we always had to listened to the constant fund raising during commercial breaks. The play-by-play announcer at the Big East was Beth Mowins and Lobo scored her 2,000th point in the quarters against PC. In watching the regional finals again, UConn led VA by 19 with 10 minutes left in first half and trailed by 7 at halftime. In 1995, only two officials and no 10 second line. The seven players who composed the rotation represented an almost perfect combination. Two seniors (Rebecca Lobo, Pam Webber), two juniors (Jamelle Elliott, Jen Rizzotti), two sophomores (Carla Berube, Kara Walters), and one super freshman (Nykesha Sales). Lobo was the ALL STAR who could really move around the basket and was an excellent 3-point shooter and Webber was the heartthrob. The two juniors were the two toughest and most competitive persons on the team and few players since then have matched either. Berube represented cool competence and Wolters was in my opinion the best true center in UConn history, based upon both her size (a 6’7” big body) and shooting touch (the baby hook) and Sales was one of the most dynamic and complete players in UConn’s history. In watching the replays, I noticed how effective Geno was in rotating players in and out. Since the team had two big players who often but not always played at the same time, he could almost always have either Wolters or Lobo on the floor, a luxury that recent teams have not had. Senior Pam Webber only averaged 10-15 minutes per game, but she always started. Five players averaged double figures in scoring. The bench part of the rotation consisted of two complementary players - a cool, collected, and competent sophomore and an all everything freshman. It has been such a long time that many have forgotten what an outstanding athlete and player that Sales was and we know what Berube has accomplished since her playing days. Incidentally, I remember seeing both her and Wolters playing for the Connecticut Blizzard, a short-lived pro league that started about the same time as WNBA. The game today is different than that of 25 years ago. The players are generally bigger, quicker, and are usually better jumpers. The game itself is often faster, but few modern teams, UConn or otherwise, could come up to the scoring ability of our first national championship. They averaged around 90 points per game. In my mind, the team was one of the five best in UConn history - the others being the 2000, 2002, 2009, and 2014 championship squads. Put them on the court today and assume they are 25 years younger and I don’t know of any other team in the nation that would look forward to playing them. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

Forum statistics

Threads: 164,474

Messages: 4,397,610

Members: 10,211

Latest member: MurrDog