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Message: [QUOTE="HuskyNan, post: 2509472, member: 4"] Because you're dinging ND for not winning any Big East titles. Look how many ACC titles ND has won since it went to that league - all 4 regular season and tournament titles in the years since it joined. The Irish are 62-2 in the ACC, a league with Duke, Louisville, Syracuse, Florida State, and Miami, which had a nice run for a few years. If UConn hadn't been in the Big East, ND might have won titles there as well. And if UConn were in the SEC, Tennessee wouldn't have won as many conference championships. ND won games against UConn because of great players (Ruth Riley, Skylar Diggins) and strong supporting casts. Guess what? That's the case with Tennessee, too. UConn lost 9 games to Tennessee, as follows: 3/29/96 Tenn 88-83 OT (M. Marciniak, C. Holdsclaw) 3/24/97 Tenn 91-81 (C. Holdsclaw, K. Jollie) 1/3/98 Tenn 84-69 (C. Holdsclaw, T. Catchings, S. Randall) 1/10/99 Tenn 92-81 (C. Holdsclaw, T. Catchings, S. Randall) 2/2/00 Tenn 72-71 (T. Catchings, S. Randall) 2/1/01 Tenn 92-88 (T. Catchings, S. Randall) 1/8/05 Tenn 68-67 (Candace Parker) 1/7/06 Tenn 89-80 (Candace Parker) 1/6/07 Tenn 70-64 (Candace Parker) One last thing - the rivalry took on epic proportions because of ESPN. If UConn and Tennessee just played periodically like, say, UConn and Baylor, there probably wouldn't have been the hype that we saw. But given the ratings of the first two UConn-Tenn matchups, ESPN pimped the rivalry and set up unprecedented home and home regular season games for the teams. Then ESPN trumpeted every little bit of gossip that would fuel the fire, e.g. "Geno calls Tennessee the Evil Empire!!!!!". Geno never hated Tennessee, he just wanted to beat the best team out there but everything soured after the sports tabloid network got through with the teams. And the ridiculous NCAA complaint initiated by a couple of the more whackadoo Tennessee fans from posts on the Boneyard was played up to gigantic proportions by ESPN. I don't feel sorry for the network at all that it's losing out on revenue because the teams don't play and am reveling in the irony that ESPN is a victim of its own machinations. [/QUOTE]

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