Women Develop Staunch Following It’s Become The `Cool’ Thing To Cheer On The Top-Ranked Team

Paul Valente, 9, walked proudly up the Gampel Pavilion aisle at halftime wearing a University of Connecticut basketball T-shirt. Scribbled all over the shirt in black ink were the autographs of Huskies players. He has been collecting the signatures for two seasons.

Missy Rose, No. 10, on his left sleeve. Rebecca Lobo, No. 50, across his chest. Kara Wolters, No. 52, right sleeve.

“I come to all the women’s games,” Valente said during the Huskies’ 94-72 victory over Georgetown Sunday. “My family has season tickets. It’s as exciting as the men’s games, and the players stay after for autographs. It’s cool.”

Huskymania has crossed gender lines, and it’s no wonder.

The No. 1-ranked UConn women (20-0) are the only unbeaten major college team in the country - men’s or women’s. And the UConn men (19-1) vaulted to No. 1 with a victory Sunday at Syracuse. It’s the first NCAA Division I school to have its two basketball teams atop the rankings at the same time.

Huskies basketball is so hot that the women have sold out their last five games at 8,241-seat Gampel. They have more than 6,500 season-ticket holders and trail only Tennessee in home attendance with an average of 7,775.

Tickets for the Jan. 16 matchup between then-No. 1 Tennessee and then-No. 2 UConn sold for as high as $100. A school-record 136 media credentials were issued for the game, shown live on ESPN.

“We didn’t have 136 fans in the stands the first game I coached here, and I’m not kidding,” said Geno Auriemma, Connecticut’s magnetic coach, who 10 years ago took over a team that had one winning season in 11 years. “We played in the field house, under a roof that leaked. We didn’t have our own locker room. Our home attendance for the season in 1988-89 was less than we get for one home game now. It’s unreal.”

A local junior high school teacher gives students bonus points if they know the score of the previous night’s women’s game. Lobo, an All-American center/forward and Rhodes Scholar candidate, receives 100 pieces of fan mail a week.

Fans are just as crazy for the men’s team. Next to the insurance business, Huskies basketball is the state’s favorite topic of conversation.

Men’s coach Jim Calhoun tells of a booster whose wake included a television so mourners wouldn’t miss a game. UConn boasts the largest media following of any college basketball team in the country, a group nicknamed “The Horde.” As many as 14 newspapers follow the team on the road, and a typical home game might attract 100 reporters.

“The whole state is wild with Huskymania, and it’s equal for the men and the women,” said Nancy Heinonen, whose family of five has season tickets for the women’s games. “As many people know Rebecca Lobo as knew Donyell Marshall last year.”

The women’s average victory margin is 35.9 points, and they outrebound heir opponents by 17.2 a game. Counting the Big East tournament last year, they’re 29-0 against league foes since January 1994.

They have 6-foot-4 All-American Rebecca Lobo and 6-7 Kara Wolters, but point guard Jennifer Rizzotti is the team’s heart and soul, and Jamele Elliott the blue-collar bruiser. Elliott learned to play with the boys on the playgrounds of Washington, D.C.

“My game is more physical because of how I grew up,” she said. “When I first started organized ball with girls, some of them cried. I had to remember I was playing against girls and adjust.”

Auriemma, a former high school boys’ coach, has learned to do the same. The guy who used to kick girls off the basketball court in Philadelphia and dreamed of being an NBA coach is one of the most respected women’s coaches in the game.

“I don’t coach them like girls: I yell at them,” he said. “I tell them to play the way basketball players are supposed to play, not like the stereotype of women playing basketball.

“Contrary to what many people think, women have the ability to withstand emotional and physical adversity … but so many times they’re treated like girls.”

The biggest difference between coaching men and women?

“Our locker room smells better.”