Likely to the surprise of few, Geno Auriemma's Lady Huskies just rolled into another national title game. They did this by dismantling Maryland in the semi-finals. The Lady Terps are pretty good. A 34-3 record entering the game speaks for itself.
Their head coach, one Brenda Frese, is certainly a fiery sort. She appears quite adept at getting her team geeked up in the moments before a game. Just prior to taking the floor to face UConn, Frese was shown in the Maryland locker room giving her Lady Terps a last second pep talk. This is OUR time. We EARNED this. We BELONG in this game. There is NOTHING we can't do if we stick together and play the way we're capable of. Now let's go out there and show the world what Maryland basketball is all about.
A very impressive rant, as such things go.
Pity she omitted one small, but quite relevant detail. The steamroller competition that awaited them. This would be like the ancient Romans psyching up a gladiator before he went out into the Colosseum bare-handed to face a pack of hungry lions. You can do it. YOU CAN DO IT!!. Oops, sorry, guess not. Whoa, that got ugly.
Such was the predictable result when Frese sent her troops out to clash with Geno's Bambinos. They would be mauled to the tune of 81-58, a 23 point beatdown. Ala the contests of old, from start to finish, there was never a doubt which side would emerge victorious. The only question in the hoops game was by how much? These two teams could play each other ten times, and Frese could rant and motivate her players before every one of them, but guess what? They'd be 0-10 when it was all over, and likely none of them would be by fewer than a 10 point margin.
Love them or hate them, the Lady Huskies under Auriemma have become the gold standard in ladies college basketball. They've reached such a level of continued excellence that it's seldom a team, ANY team, despite how good they are in their own right, can even give them a decent game over the entire 40 minutes of such contests. Yes, there are ebbs and flows to any game. A run here or there either way is quite common. Yet with UConn, it just seems to be a matter of time before they go into warp drive and zoom out of sight. One minute a viewer might see a close score, but after returning from a nature call or fridge run, wham, the Huskies are up by 20. Game over. Again. And convincingly.
Which brings me to Geno Auriemma. One never sees him ranting and psyching up his players the way Frese has. What goes on behind closed doors at UConn practices is anybody's guess, but few would question the results speak for themselves. Whatever they're doing has obviously been working in a huge way for a long time.
No, the three words your truly once saw Auriemma speak to his players just before taking the floor for a big game didn't need any spit-spraying, arm-waving, neck vein bulging rants. The message was quite simple.
Leave no doubt.
Seems to be working. The lions knew it in days or yore, and I suspect after the good Ms. Frese saw her team get dismembered, she has few doubts either anymore about who's who in the food chain when it comes to a face-to-face showdown.
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