UConn's extraordinary level of consistency

[Glenn]

It is often cited that UConn has not lost back-to-back games since 1993, over 1000 games ago. And it is frequently mentioned that we have not lost to an unranked team since St. John's in 2012.

These claims grossly understate UConn's stunning consistency: We have not lost to a non-tournament team since 1996 (Syracuse)! And we have not lost to a non-top 4 seed since 2005 (BC). BTW, the St Johns loss was to a very good team, an eventual 3 seed, that was underappreciated when we played them. By comparison, Stanford lost to a non-tournament team in 2021, SC in 2020, and Baylor lost to a non-top 4 seed in 2020. The incredible consistency of our teams over the past 25 years is unparalleled. I would claim that we have had no bad losses over this period: we have been upset by teams that were not as good as us, and we have had some uncomfortably close games, but no bad losses.

Finally, let me argue that how we fare against NCAA tournament teams is a far better metric than looking at our record using the AP ranking at the time we play them. The AP ranking is nice in that it exists at the time of the game, but it is subject to a lot of error as early and mid-season rankings can be a poor metric of quality as the writers have not seen many games. The NCAA seeding, by contrast, uses a team's whole body of work, and the seeding is done much more carefully than the weekly voting. The NCAA seeding also has the benefit of ranking approximately the top 40 or 50 programs, rather than just the top 25. (Some of the lowest seeds are in the tournament owing to automatic qualification, so it does not tell you who are the top 64 teams.)

Here is a table of our record by seed.

 

[oldhusky]

All of these numbers are very impressive. I think the Uconn's superiority over a very long time can be shown in many many ways. I always liked the games without back to back losses, when a few years ago it dawned on me that the last two game losing streak was before any current player was born.

The consecutive final fours is hard to beat, and I remember looking for the "worst" year since the Lobo era and discovering it was a season between Dee and Maya when they were 25-8, made it to the sweet sixteen, and ended the season ranked 13th in the country. That is a very high floor over so many years.

Another measure that is certainly a plus in recruiting is how rarely an incoming class does not win a national championship in four years, but we have had two straight graduating classes without a championship, Crystal's and Megan's (of course her senior year would have been this last one). If we don't win this year Christyn and Liv would be in that category too, so it's time to keep those other impressive stats and get back to giving our recruits at least one championship in their four high profile years at Uconn.

 

[LoboDays]

Did someone say they didn’t consistently put a good team out there? Lotta work to prove the earth isn’t flat.