ShareThisThe thing about streaks is they tend to snowball. They start small, pick up steam and define programs, players, coaches.
The Connecticut women won their 90th consecutive game Tuesday night, beating Pacific, 85-42. U-Conn - as in U-Conn hardly believe how good they are - plays Thursday at Stanford, the last team to upend the Huskies.
The contrast to Connecticut can be found in Pasadena. California Institute of Technology - Caltech - is a Division III men's program that has lost an all-levels record 297 consecutive Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference games, dating to 1985. Then again, the numbers this school mostly deals with are in mathematics, with faculty and alumni combining for 32 Nobel Prizes.
HUSKIES HEROES: 2008-present
Geno Auriemma is an excitable fellow already, and this streak that has the Huskies winning by an average of 33.6 points has the Connecticut coach even more riled up because he wants his team to stand alone. He snarled at the national media after Connecticut broke UCLA's either-gender 88-game Division I winning streak earlier this month, "Like it or not, we made you pay attention."
BRAINIACS, NOT BALLERS: 1985-present
The Caltech basketball office has a ball covered with autographs - of five Nobel laureates. Six players with no prep experience had summer internships at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Still, all that brainpower hasn't helped on the court; the Beavers have lost 297 consecutive league games.
AIRBALL ONE: 1990-91
Sacramento Kings coach Dick Motta wanted to ground the team's new plane - Airball One - during the team's 43-game road losing streak, still the longest in NBA history. The skid mercifully ended on Nov. 23, 1991, when the Kings beat Orlando 95-93, thanks to two late baskets by Wayman Tisdale. Motta lifted the alcohol ban on Airball One and handed everyone six-packs of beer. The Kings lost their next road game by 41 points to Phoenix, and Motta was fired on Christmas Eve, saying later, "The best Christmas present I ever got."
BRUINS BRUISERS: 1971-74
UCLA's 88-game winning streak lasted nearly three years, but what people remember most is how it ended, at No. 2 Notre Dame, where the Bruins were outscored 12-0 down the stretch and lost 71-70 as coach John Wooden famously stuck to his no timeout rule in the final two minutes. Said star Bill Walton recently of the loss: "A complete failure on all levels, particularly as a human being."
LAKERS LEGENDS, 1971-72
Perhaps the greatest NBA team ever, the Lakers won 33 consecutive games, still a record for major sports. The streak lasted more than two months and was keyed by Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Gail Goodrich. A fourth Hall of Famer - Elgin Baylor - retired early in the season with worn-out legs.
E-mail Joe Davidson at jdavidson(at)sacbee.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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