Uconn team records that may stand for our lifetimes.

[UcMiami]

Posted this in Alex's thread "In other news ...' but thought it deserved its own thread - did I miss out on anything?

When looking at some of the records for Uconn there are a few that stand out as being hard to imagine ever being broken except possibly by another Uconn team:

1. 90 wins - no other coaching staff in WCBB seems to have perfected the ability to so consistently achieve focus in the moment - possession to possessions, game to game, year after year. Even should this great Uconn team go undefeated, they would still end up needing another 15 wins next year to tie. The only recently dominant team that looked like it might be capable of getting close - Baylor after their 40-0 season ended only three games into their next season.

2. 5 undefeated NCAA D1 seasons - again, the focus achieved at Uconn is unique - the next closest team/coach has one such season, and it has only been achieved three other times (Baylor/Kim, TN/Pat, Texas/Conradt)

3. 10 national championships - like Wooden/UCLA before, Geno/Uconn are spanning eras in the respective genders from pre-modern to modern where the money/resources/focus are expanding rapidly. The chance of any current or future coach has of coming close to this record is very slim, especially considering there are 2 active coaches with 2 wins (Kim/Tara) and only 4 more with a single NC (Gary, Brenda, Muffet, Sylvia.) Like in the men's game, competition has expanded and coaches will become 'legendary' for reaching 3 or 4 wins rather than challenging the actual record.

4. 8 Consecutive final four appearances - five teams/coaches have appeared in five consecutive final fours - Uconn (2), LSU, Stanford, and ND. Two of those streak are on-going Uconn at 8 and ND at 5. This one is a record that it might be possible to duplicate or pass - ND and Uconn both look likely to extend their streaks, and ND should Uconn falter in the next few years is well positioned to continue their streak into future years. While the competition has improved in the women's game, the coaching has perhaps not kept up with the talent, and building a team capable of being one of the 4 best teams each year is a lot easier than building one that is continually THE best.

5. 2 3peats - the 3peat has been accomplished three times, twice by Geno/Uconn and once by Pat/TN - with the increased competition, it is getting harder to maintain being #1 in three consecutive years. With no active coaches/teams having achieved it once, it is hard to see any current coach/team getting there twice. And it will just get harder every year.

6. 2 Double digit minimum MOV seasons - as noted in #2, undefeated seasons are rare enough, maintaining an MOV of double digits in an undefeated season is even rare having been done only twice, as Alex notes. This record is not likely, but also not unachievable - putting together a truly dominant team in women's basketball can be done, and maintaining a ten point MOV through perhaps 10 truly competitive games in a season could be accomplished by any really good coach. It is rare, but the idea of doing it twice if you have a Griner and Sims combination with a good supporting cast is not unthinkable.

7. 11 point minimum MOV - see #6 - if a double digit minimum MOV undefeated season is not unthinkable, doing it by 12 points or more is also not unthinkable or unachievable.

8. 40.6 full year MOV - achieved in a one loss season! Considering that Uconn holds the top five full year MOV spots in the record book, and 12 of the top 20 positions! and the only teams to break into Uconn's dominance accomplished their MOVs in the previous century, this may actually be a harder record to reach than it might appear. Really good teams in WCBB can blow out a lot of their competition by ridiculous margins, but sustaining those margins through the NCAAs and against the stronger parts of their schedule is pretty difficult. Uconn's focus on detail even in blow-outs, their distancing themselves from their strongest competition and ability to blow-out even highly ranked teams is unprecedented and may be unreachable by other teams. The combination of explosive offense and relentless defense is unique and has never been seen before - and may never be matched by another team. This record was achieved with a one loss season, and with the 5 starters on the team averaging only 27.2 minutes per game. A lot of the credit therefore belongs to a bench that maintained or increased the MOV in games.

9. Two consecutive undefeated season - given that only one active coach other than Geno has achieved a single undefeated season, this one seems to be a pretty safe record.

 

[meyers7]

All very good records. But probably the main reason they won't be broken "in our lifetimes" is due to most of BY's "lifetimes" being pretty short at this point.

You can add in (though not UCONN WBB's alone) winning Men and Women's NC's in the same year.....twice.

 

[Kibitzer]

UConn has plated over 800 games -- since 1992 IIRC -- without losing two in a row.

The Golden State Warriors are getting close -- only about 750 to go.

 

[Huskylove3]

All very good records. But probably the main reason they won't be broken "in our lifetimes" is due to most of BY's "lifetimes" being pretty short at this point.

You can add in (though not UCONN WBB's alone) winning Men and Women's NC's in the same year.....twice.

I'm in my 20's and knowing that records are meant to be broken, I hope UCONN breaks their own records in 20+ years. And I agree, it'll be interesting to see if another school can ever have both women and men win the same year.

 

[UcMiami]

All very good records. But probably the main reason they won't be broken "in our lifetimes" is due to most of BY's "lifetimes" being pretty short at this point.

You can add in (though not UCONN WBB's alone) winning Men and Women's NC's in the same year.....twice.

Meyers7 - very funny (and unfortunately true for many of us ) but ...
My point really is that with changes to the competitive atmosphere in the women's game similar to what happened during and after the UCLA era of Wooden, most of the records listed likely will never be broken. Coach K with five NCs is only half way to Wooden on the men's side and his chance of getting the next five is less than 0.1%. I would put most of the above records in the same category.

 

[DobbsRover2]

And of course perhaps the most amazing UConn record is a "situational" one, the 10-0 record in NCs, and coupled with the guy's clean slate to make 14-0 clocks in at a 1 in 16,384 chance. Very unlikely to happen, even if you go just with the women's-only 1 in 1024 chance.

Going through this year's FF record book, there are some UConn records that will be very hard to break.

• Largest winning margin - (NC game), 33. Will there ever be that sized mismatch for another school in an NC game?
• Most FTs (34) and FTAs (46) in an FF game. Since all but one of the other listings for this record were from the last century and all were at least 10 years old, hard to see it happening again.
• Most 3pt FGs (FF two games), 19. Though UConn set this record in 2013, all the other listings go to 2003 or earlier.
• Most points (547), most steals (81) and highest FG% (56.1%) in a Tourney series (3 game minimum) for 2000 team. None of these three records have been closely approached.

There are many other Tourney records that UConn holds for things like blocks, FT%, assists and others that I can see being beat more easily. One that UConn somehow has to make sure another team gets:

• Fewest points in a half (NC game), 12. I'm sure UConn can find an opponent in this year's NC to hand this one off to.

And there is a weird record set against UConn that will be tough to break, but hopefully will.

• Highest 3pt FG% (NC game), 57.1%. UTenn in 2000. Total blowout for UConn, but the Vols went 4-7 from the arc.

An obvious streak record is another top candidate.

• Consecutive home wins, 99. If a team ever gets up in the 80's, it will be time for UConn to schedule a game with them, as the Huskies did before Stanford got up to 82 in 2013. UConn's current home win streak sits at 40. UConn and ND are tied for the road victories record at 30, ND falling one short of solely owning the record when they lost to Miami last year. UConn should run its current road streak to 14 tonight, and they could pass 30 early in next year's AAC games if the streak holds.

 

[DobbsRover2]

All very good records. But probably the main reason they won't be broken "in our lifetimes" is due to most of BY's "lifetimes" being pretty short at this point.

You can add in (though not UCONN WBB's alone) winning Men and Women's NC's in the same year.....twice.

Right, if UConn doesn't beat a top 10 team by at least 30, half of the BY goes into cardiac arrest. Makes the mortality rate for top-ranked Botswana look positively cheery.

 

[alexrgct]

Great post, UCMiami. Just a couple ideas of mine:

• Geno is now at 923 victories, or 175 short of Pat's record 1,098. The record is in spitting distance depending on how many more seasons Geno coaches, obviously.
• If Uconn wins its bracket this season, The Huskies will notch a new record of 22 consecutive NCAA Tourney wins from 2013-16. Current record is the LVs from 1996-99 (loss in regional final to Duke that year ended streak at 21 after three=peat from 1996-98).
• making the F4 again would also bring UConn up to a staggering nine trips in a row to the national semis, as well as 17 total. Nine F4s in a row is a big-time record, and 17 total is just one shy of Pat's record of 18.
• This will sound weird, but if UConn has 12 more victories in a row this regular season, the program record will be "longest third-longest winning streak." That's awkward to explain, but Uconn would actually have the third-longest winning streak in WCBB, period. UConn has had the two longest winning streaks since the 2010 BET semifinals, at which point the Huskies' streaks were 71 and 70 (now 90 and 70, obviously).

Yep, this fine WBB program wins, wins, wins no matter what!!!

 

[pacific 44]

Uconn has a really gaudy long term record for not losing to unranked teams.This shows just how focused Geno keeps his troops.Their last loss to such a team was to ST.John in 2012,and the one before that was 10-15 years prior.When you consider how many teams he played that were ranked between 26 and 40 and almost never have any kind of totally off-night meltdown is truly remarkable.Sorry i don't have the exact numbers but the numbers are astonishing when you take into consideration that the team adds and subtracts players every year.Every other team in the country has a Ball State or two just about every year,but Uconn will just never give an inferior opponent even a punchers chance. That ST.Johns game still ticks me off.(spoiled much?).

 

[UcMiami]

Nice posts Alec and Pacific -
Pacific - the no losses to unranked opponent streak that end with St. John's really shocking win was huge, and the one that restarted thereafter is pretty solid too, but I think both Baylor and ND and now SC are showing that well coached teams can accomplish long streaks too. Not sure how difficult it might be to break. The records are:
Wins against unranked opponents: 173 straight.
Wins against unranked opponents at home: 261 (spanning 19 years 1993-2012)

Alex:
The FF streak is included as #4 in the OP. It is still active and likely to reach 9 this year, but interestingly ND is likely to reach 6 this year and shows no signs that they may fall off the pace either.
The total victories is still Pat's and there are three other active coaches between Geno and that number so no telling who will retire with the top spot at this moment.
The NCAA victory streak is currently Pat/TN, but we all hope that is a very temporary situation!
I too am really hoping they get to the 55 wins streak too - that would give them not only the top three streaks but also 4 of the top 5 (they are about to push TN out of the top five. ) They also currently hold 6 of the 12 longest streaks - though that gets into single season length streaks.