I had the privilege a few weeks ago of watching the most dominant team in recent sports memory- possibly the most dominant team in college sports history- play for the National Championship.

College women’s basketball may not be the gigantic national TV event that the men’s tournament is, but it’s the arena of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team. If you haven’t paid attention to this team, you may want to.

In the last two years, this team is 78-0. That’s right, they’ve won seventy eight games in a row, including 2 National Championships…and their SMALLEST margin of victory over that stretch was a win by “only” 12 points.

To put this in perspective, it’s the second longest winning streak EVER in college basketball, outdone only by John Wooden’s UCLA team in the 1970’s that won 88 in a row.

Most of Connecticut’s games have been won by 20-30 points, and I believe they had only trailed at all in one game. Truly, for the last 2 years they’ve been unbeatable. “You cannot stop them, you can only hope to contain them”.

Now I’m not a huge basketball aficionado, but I love championship anything, so when I have the chance to see that powerful of a team in a winner takes all scenario I know it’s worth staying up a little late for. It was not disappointing.

UConn was playing Stanford for the title. Stanford happened to be the lone team in the last 2 years to even hold a lead over the Huskies, but still the Huskies were heavily favored to win their 2nd consecutive National Championship. Lots of hype-history in the making, no way Stanford can win, et cetera et cetera.

So in the first half, guess what happens. That’s right, UConn completely lays an egg. They score 12 total points, tying their school record for lowest point production in a half in the 130 year history of the school. They play terribly, miss nearly every shot, are totally out of sync with each other and basically stink up the joint. I know nothing about basketball, and even I could tell that they were playing atrociously. They head into the locker room at halftime trailing by 15 points and everyone watching is just stunned. It looks like they are about to not only lose, but lose ugly.

And the first 5 minutes of the second half were more of the same- just ugly to watch, embarrassing for UConn fans I’m sure. But somewhere in there, they turned it around, outscored Stanford 41 to 20 in the second half and went on to win the Championship 53-47. It was a great game.

My sports writing I’m sure leaves something to be desired, but there were some lessons in this game that I found helpful.

#1- Even the very best of all time will have their “off” times.

Going into this game, there was no way to argue that this was not the best women’s basketball team ever- it could not have been clearer. At the same time, the scoreboard doesn’t lie.

So how could the BEST TEAM EVER be so godawful in their biggest game ever? Answer: it just happens sometimes.

Could have been the pressure, could have been the bright lights, could have been any number of things, but it just goes to show that even that level of Excellence still has to deal with adversity.

I believe that YOU are among the best of all time. You wouldn’t be here reading this if you weren’t. If you’re having an off week, day, quarter, whatever- don’t spazz out over it, it happens occasionally. Do what you can to…..

#2- Remember how awesome you are.

UConn clearly had forgotten who they were in the first half of that game. They literally played like the least skilled, least confident, least motivated team in the country, which was clearly not who they were. I do not know what happened during halftime or in some huddle (wow, how cool would it be to hear that?), but something caused that group of women to remember that they were the very best.

I encourage you to do the same- remember how fantastic you are. Replay your successes in your mind- even little ones. Look back on what you’ve done, the thousands of lives you’ve impacted, the victories you’ve achieved both publicly and privately, and if you’re having trouble coming up with some, call someone who can help you remember!

Sometimes it’s easy to forget the greatness that we each possess, and when we re-remember it POW! That can be a big help.

The biggest and most obvious lesson of course is that it’s not how you start anything, it’s how you finish. If the Huskies had just thrown in the towel at the half, well….you know.  Great stories come from both situations- your story begins right now. I can’t wait to hear it.

Be Free!

Roger Seip
Instructor