Connecticut Women Playing for Place in History

SAN ANTONIO

Defeating Baylor on Sunday night, 70-50, Connecticut sought its rightful place on the trophy shelf and the bookshelf, reaching the national championship game in pursuit of a seventh title and its standing in women’s basketball history.

First, a caveat: although these Huskies, who face Stanford on Tuesday, have won 38 games this season and 77 in a row over two seasons, they are not considered the greatest women’s team ever. Not even the best UConn team. The Huskies’ 2002 championship team went unbeaten in 39 games and is widely considered to be unmatched.

The current UConn team lacks the experience, depth and individual insistence — what is called killer instinct or, more colloquially, a bit of “the dog” — found in the 2002 lineup of Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash, Tamika Williams and Asjha Jones.

“The 2002 team would beat this team 9 out of 10 times, hands down,” Coach Geno Auriemma said. “They were a W.N.B.A. team in their own right.”

Yet there is a collective determination about the current UConn team, a ravenous purpose, that has given it a singular presence. After Baylor closed to 41-38 in a rare second-half threat to the Huskies, UConn remained composed and drew away with a 16-4 run.

“Everything we’ve done to this point could go wrong,” Auriemma said beforehand. “But no matter what the score is, my players are under the impression that it doesn’t matter, we’re going to win. I’ve seen teams, when they’re winning, they know they’re going to win and want to win. When they’re losing, they accept losing: ‘O.K., it’s not our day today, I’ll get it tomorrow.’

“My guys refuse to accept that under any circumstances.”

Some teams might have grown complacent in victory or tuned out the coach. Not UConn. No opponent has finished closer than 10 points during the streak. The Huskies won their first 37 games this season by an average of 36 points and trailed opponents for a grand total of 37 minutes 52 seconds out of 1,520 minutes played.

UConn won its first four N.C.A.A. tournament games by a combined 188 points, a record.

“We just keep going at teams until we wear them down,” guard Lorin Dixon said. “Whether it’s first half, second half, up by 10 or 30, it’s the same mentality. Sometimes, it’s not like we’re playing against other teams; it’s like we’re playing against ourselves.”

Some coaches challenge Auriemma’s assertion that the 2002 UConn team was greater than this one. Bill Fennelly, whose Iowa State team lost to UConn in the Dayton Regional semifinals, called these Huskies “arguably the best team I’ve ever seen.”

Apart from UConn’s talent and relentlessness, Fennelly noted that the Huskies played the country’s most disruptive defense while committing few fouls. Iowa State did not attempt a free throw in its 74-36 defeat.

It also helps that UConn has perhaps the two best players in the country. Forward Maya Moore (34 points, 12 rebounds against Baylor) won the Wade Trophy as national player of the year Saturday, and center Tina Charles (21 points, 13 rebounds) won a similar award given by The Associated Press.

Once Baylor threatened in the second half, Moore scored 8 points in the 16-4 run, muscling inside and lofting a feathery hook shot over the 6-foot-8 Brittney Griner, while Moore found her midrange accuracy.

Oklahoma Coach Sherri Coale, whose Sooners lost to UConn in the 2002 national championship game, said she agreed with Auriemma that his earlier team was better. Yet, Coale added, Charles gave this team more reliable production in the frontcourt.

“I don’t know that there’s been a more dominant center than Tina this year,” Coale said. “With that 2002 team, you might get Asjha, you might get Swin, you might get Tamika. You never really knew. They know what they’re getting from Tina. They go right to her. Sometimes, it’s that focus on knowing where those baskets are going to come from that maybe makes them great in a different sort of way.”

Curiously, some have suggested that UConn’s winning streak is somehow bad for women’s basketball when, given similar development in men’s basketball, such dominance seems inevitable and necessary for the sport’s growth.

John Wooden, who coached the U.C.L.A. men to 10 titles in 12 seasons in the 1960s and ’70s, told The Wall Street Journal that he thought UConn’s dominance was “good for the game,” adding, “There’s some incentive for others to come up to Connecticut’s level.”

Most people suggesting otherwise are “gender biased,” Auriemma said.

In five years, UConn’s success will have prompted a host of other teams to have higher aspirations, he said.

“Somebody’s got to stand up and say, ‘I’ll be the bad guy,’ ” Auriemma said. “And right now, I’m the bad guy, the guy everybody loves to hate. We’re the team everybody loves to beat. We’re the Yankees, the Celtics, the Montreal Canadiens, the Russian hockey team in 1980.

“But everything goes away at some point. Everything changes. And when the change comes, it will be because somebody’s paid attention to what we’re doing and said, ‘That’s how I’m going to do it; I’m going to knock those guys off.’ It could be this weekend. But it’s going to happen. And I would like to think that we’re going to help it happen, and that’s good for the game.”