As the Connecticut women's basketball squad continues to annihilate opponents and roll up wild winning margins, a question that annoys Huskies coach Geno Auriemma keeps emerging:
Is UConn's dominance bad for women's basketball?
The Huskies have seemingly increased their superiority by steamrolling their first three opponents in the NCAA Tournament, winning the games by 52, 46 and 60 points.
UConn wasn't even the least bit challenged in the Sweet 16 by Mississippi State and delivered a 98-38 beat down on Saturday to reach the Elite Eight. The 60-point margin is the largest ever in a Sweet 16 matchup.
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The top-seeded Huskies (35-0) play second-seeded Texas (31-4) on Monday and Auriemma has some simple advice for people not interested in seeing another possible blowout victory.
"Don't watch. Nobody's putting a gun to your head to watch," Auriemma said. "So don't watch, and don't write about it. Spend your time on things that you think are important. If you don't think this is important, don't pay any attention to it."
Auriemma finds the subject tiresome and compares his program's recent dominance -- the Huskies won the last three titles and 10 overall on his watch -- to the time when Tiger Woods dominated professional golf.
"When Tiger was winning every major, nobody said he was bad for golf," Auriemma said. "Actually, he did a lot for golf. He made everybody have to be a better golfer. And they did. And now there's a lot more great golfers because of Tiger."
Huskies star Breanna Stewart hears the commotion and doesn't understand how people expect the UConn players to respond.
"Well, it's funny, I just saw something about that and I think it's interesting when people say that," Stewart said. "If you look at our game (Saturday), yeah, there was a huge difference in the score, but the way that we were playing, we were executing everything we needed to execute, and I know speaking for the players, we had a great time.
"I think that it's a mixture of both, because people say that women's basketball is boring to watch, but when we're playing at such a high level and because we're beating everyone else, then they don't want to watch it either. So I don't know what they want us to do about it."
The Huskies enter Monday's contest with a 72-game winning streak -- the second longest in women's basketball history behind a 90-game streak the program put together from 2008-11
Texas is trying to advance to the Final Four for the first time since 2003 but nobody is giving the Longhorns the chance.
You see, Texas lost 105-54 to the Huskies in last season's Sweet 16 -- and the 51-point margin was the Sweet 16 record until UConn's win over Mississippi State on Saturday.
"Last year, I think they put the hammer on us because we gave up," Texas standout Imani Boyette said at a press conference. "We gave in when we kind of hit resistance. So I think we just figured out how to go through that wall, when you do -- the other team goes on a run, you know how to respond, and you know how to stay within each other and not get down on yourselves."
