Geno and Gender: Huskies and the Perils of Perfection

Let's talk about the power of perfection. The University of Connecticut Huskies just won the NCAA women's basketball title, capping a season where they went 39-0.

No men's team has finished a season undefeated since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers.

Led by Wooden Award-winner Maya Moore, Final Four Most Outstanding Player Tina Charles and senior guard Renee Montgomery, they trounced Louisville 76-54.

This team was more than unbeaten. It won every game by double digits. After the game, that fact was repeated over and over by UConn's coach, the unabashedly arrogant Geno Auriemma. Auriemma has won six NCAA championships since 1995.

What's more impressive, even shocking, is that since he became head coach in 1985 the team has graduated 100 percent of its players. After his latest triumph he was still making eardrums bleed, braying, "At Connecticut, there is no next time, there's only this time, there's only this time. Every single game was won by double digits. That's never been done before in the history of college basketball, men's or women's."

He's earned the right to brag, but his tactics of criticizing his players and setting up power dynamics where they feel like they have to please their demanding coach has raised eyebrows since he dragged the UConn program to national prominence.

In the past, his caustic, scowling, megalomaniacal style has earned tremendous praise. Aditi Kinkhabwala of Sports Illustrated summed up the conventional wisdom last year in an article subtitled "Auriemma is brash, but he's good for women's hoops."

Kinkhabwala wrote that "the goading, the gamesmanship, the guarantees to grab headlines in a game that doesn't get nearly enough are all fabulous. The media laps it up, and the true genius of it all is that it's real."

It's real, all right. But now that he has a team even grander than his ego, Auriemma should—for the good of his players and the women's game—take a step back and cede the spotlight.

This should be a moment to praise a team that for my money is the best NCAA women's team ever, and in the conversation as the most dominant college team, men's or women's in history.

The fact that their exploits haven't received more attention is just another instance of the way women's sports get the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Auriemma isn't helping. There was a prime example of this right before the Huskies Final Four matchup with Stanford. At a packed press conference, Coach Geno "stood up" for Stanford, saying:

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