Neither snow nor sleet nor rain nor gloom of night nor a cold/flu/other respiratory ailment that has turned my head into the Incredible Gunk Factory nor moving the start time up five hours will stay this fan from her appointed rounds. The aforementioned respiratory ailment reduced my effectiveness a bit by taking away my voice, essentially turning me into the Harpo Marx of women's basketball fans by forcing me to communicate with the various Liberty noisemakers we packed to make up for the lack of a crowd.
How much do I love my team? How much? Entirely too much more than is healthy. Are all college teams so adorable that you want to pinch their cheeks and give them all brownies? Or is this just a symptom of advancing age?
Today's game between Notre Dame and undefeated UConn will be the most heavily promoted regular season game in women's college basketball history thanks to the ESPN Game Day crew paying a visit to Storrs.
Unlike so many other analysts, at the very least Dick Vitale will maintain his energy and enthusiasm even if UConn once again wins by a large margin. And it will also be a reminder of the days when Jay Bilas worked women's NCAA tournament games. His description of UConn going back door time and time again in the 2000 National Championship game especially sticks out as it ends up in all the highlight videos of that team.
Notre Dame comes into this game with the expectation that they are one of the few teams that could beat UConn. Before the season began the Big East subtly indicated the expectation level for Notre Dame by scheduling two regular season games between UConn and Notre Dame. The reasons for those expectations were pretty clear.
Notre Dame returned all the key players that came within ten points of UConn last season. They also added two key players that were injured for that game in guard Brittany Mallory and post Devereaux Peters. And most of all, they added a needed dynamic scorer in freshman guard in Skyler Diggins. For their part Notre Dame has lived up to those expectations by coming into this game undefeated and clearly better than a season ago.
However, UConn also became a better team than they were a season ago. The road map for UConn to improve was nowhere as clear as was it for Notre Dame.
UConn was losing an All-American point guard and team leader in Renee Montgomery. Certainly UConn being just as good or even better this season was a realistic possibility if all the key players were healthy. Caroline Doty's strong return from her ACL injury helped minimize the negative impact of Montgomery's graduation on UConn's offense, as predicted before the season.
And UConn's defensive improvement was expected, but the magnitude of that improvement has been a surprise. The defense improved to the point that UConn head coach Geno Auriemma has said several times that he can not explain it when asked why the team has been so good on defense this season.
Can we please relegate Seton Hall to America East already? (Sorry, America East.) It's bad enough that their play embarrasses the conference, but they drag other teams down to their level, which just messes up the entire conference. Unacceptable.
WE NEEDED THAT. Okay, maybe I'm overstating things a little, but you can't talk enough about the importance of early-season momentum, especially in a dog-eat-dog conference like the BEast.
You know a game's gotten physical when, at halftime, you take a few moments to tweet to the opposing team that you would appreciate it if they stopped elbowing one of your players in the face. I wish I were making it up.
It's been a long time since I've gotten this into a game, or at least since I've allowed myself to get this rowdy. But there were so many Virginia Tech fans there, and they came on a Focus on the Family bus, and they brought signs, and the little kids from the CYO were annoying the living daylights out of us because they spread out over two sections, and it was healthier than swearing at everyone and their mother.
With all due respect to the Southland Conference, this is how a Big East team should treat a Southland team that comes visiting. Smack 'em down, be nice enough to let 'em in a little, then slam the door. As much as you need to learn from big opponents, conference opponents, and people who are on your own level, you also need to learn how to properly lay the smackdown on opponents who are clearly below your talent level.
