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The Daily Dose/January 25, 2017
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
GET OUT YOUR HISTORY BOOKS: Earlier this month the University of Connecticut, commonly known as UConn, women’s basketball team, coached by Geno Auriemma, tied, then broke, the NCAA record for most consecutive wins by a basketball team with their 90th and then their 91st consecutive victory. The record covers both genders and all divisions.
They broke the record set by the UConn women’s basketball team, also coached by Auriemma, who won 90 straight from November 2008 through December 2010. This streak broke the all-time NCAA record set by John Wooden’s UCLA squads, who won 88-straight games from January 1971- January 1974.
Once More, With Feeling: The significance of this cannot be overstated:
A team broke its own record!
This does not happen too often. There are a few instances of it in the baseball record book but they are rare. For one person to do something better than anyone else is noteworthy enough. To do it again is almost super-human.
Some Places Have Interns For This Crap: The NBA has a couple of examples of this. In November 1957, Bill Russell established the record for Most Rebounds in an NBA game with 49. He broke it again with 51 rebounds in February 1960. Similarly, Wilt Chamberlain established the NBA single-game scoring in January 1961 with 78 points and broke it with his 100-point game in March 1962.
Back On Message: Some like to dismiss Auriemma’s accomplishments because he coaches chicks. Their loss. Not only is Auriemma the holder of the two longest winning streaks in college basketball, but he has won eleven NCAA championships, also a record for a NCAA basketball coach, and he has won three Olympic gold medals coaching the US women’s team. By any measure, Auriemma is one of the very best there has ever been at what he does, which is coach college basketball.
Some malcontents like to say further that the competition isn’t as tough in women’s college basketball, that they’re simply aren’t that many quality teams. OK, so what? If the competition is substandard why hasn’t anyone else done it?
The Bottom Line: Excellence was there for the taking and only Geno has put up these numbers. While the players are different, the coach is the same and matching and then breaking your own record is a tremendous accomplishment.
THOSE ZANY ROYALS: King of England Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn on this date in 1533. It’s the second marriage for Henry, who was actually still married to Queen Catherine, whom he had wed 24 years earlier, though she had been banished from court a couple of years earlier.
Henry, though, had the hots for Anne and was bound and determined to marry her. Pope Clement VII, however, declined to annul his marriage to Catherine, but the new Archbishop of Canterbury, no fool, had no such qualms and did his duty, annulling the marriage in May 1533. A few days later he declared Henry’s marriage to Anne valid and England’s break with the Catholic Church was underway.
Their union produced the future Queen Elizabeth I, but other attempts to produce a male heir failed and soon Henry VIII was dating around again and Anne was executed in 1536.
Is This The Party To Whom I Am Speaking?: Alexander Graham Bell in New York City and Thomas Watson in San Francisco conduct the first transcontinental telephone call on this date in 1915.
A Nice Accomplice To History: Watson was, of course, Bell’s assistant for several years, and was on the receiving end of History’s first telephone call on March 10, 1876 when Bell called him from the next room.
Higher…Stronger…Colder: What History now refers to as the first Winter Olympics open in Chamonix, France on this date in 1924. They were then known as the International Winter Sports Week and were held in conjunction with the 1924 Summer Olympics, to be held in Paris later in the year.
Dry, Technical Matter: Norway and Finland each won four gold medals. America won one, Charles Jewtraw in 500-meter speed skating, and the US hockey team won the silver medal.
Thought For The Day: When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is. – Louis L’Amour, The Lonesome Dove
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: The oldest continuously operating military unit in the world is the King’s Own Immemorial 1st Infantry Regiment, founded in Spain in 1248.
Today’s Stumper: When was ice hockey first contested at the Olympic Games? Answer next time!
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