The University of Connecticut women’s basketball team surpassed one of the most storied streaks of US sports lore on Tuesday with their 89th straight victory.
The top-ranked Huskies defeated Florida State University 93-62 to top the 88-game winning streak established by the University of California at Los Angeles men’s team from 1971 to 1974.
That streak, by UCLA teams coached by the legendary John Wooden, had been the gold standard among US collegiate programs that develop NBA talent.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Maya Moore notched a double-double, with a career-high 41 points and 10 rebounds. Bria Hartley added 21 points for Connecticut, a team that has not lost since April 6, 2008 — when it fell in the NCAA collegiate tournament semi-finals.
Only Stanford in last year’s national final and Baylor last month have lost to Connecticut by fewer than 10 points during the streak.
Wooden died on June 4 at age 99, but his grandson Greg Wooden attended the game and said he thought the iconic coach would have been delighted to see UCLA’s streak surpassed by a women’s team.
He said his grandfather believed that women’s teams, especially Connecticut, were playing his brand of basketball, emphasizing teamwork over individual star power.
“He liked the way they passed the ball, the way they had quite a few stars who could have scored probably a lot more points on other teams, but were willing to sacrifice for the best of the team,” Greg Wooden said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier