Why the dominance of Geno Auriemma and UConn is good for sports

At the age of 7, Geno Auriemma emigrated from Italy to Norristown, Pa., and engrossed himself in the twin passion of Philadelphia: basketball and busting chops.

It's proven to be an effective biographical mix. There's the immigrant's mentality of seeing limitless possibilities. There's the young student who saw learning every intricacy of a game as an entre into American life. And there was the development of a caustic wit that allows no one, no matter how great, to be placed too high on a pedestal.

The result, all these years later in Storrs, Conn., is an alpha male running the alpha dog of women's basketball programs.

On Tuesday, Connecticut plays Syracuse for its 11th national title and fourth consecutive, all under Auriemma's Hall-of-Fame coaching. The Huskies are 37-0 and on a 74-game win streak, each victory by double digits.

There's a debate over whether Auriemma's Huskies are good or bad for women's basketball, which completely misses the broader point of what is going on here.

The competitive balance of a few seasons of women's basketball is a small price to pay to witness the complete and extended domination of a competitive pursuit, the most rare kind of operational success, in or out of sports.

Since when did being too good, too effective, too proficient become a negative in America?

You want to watch close basketball games? The NBA is on the other channel. Or just wait: Auriemma, 62, will eventually retire. You'll miss this – and this mentality – then.

It may lack drama, but to brush this off as inconsequential is like watching the rise of Mike Tyson and whining that he punched too hard. The absurdity and audaciousness of what Auriemma has not only just built, but built upon and built upon and built upon again – reaching levels of not just perfect, but more perfect perfections – deserves to be marveled.

UConn isn't chasing perfection. It achieved perfection in 1995, when it went 35-0. In the process it changed the sport forever by helping fuel the formation of the WNBA in 1996.

That season, by current standards, is quaint. The 2016 team would annihilate the 1995 club like it annihilates everyone. That's because Auriemma is insatiable.

Winning one title wasn't enough. Winning a second wasn't either. When UConn took three in a row from 2004-06 no one stopped working. How about back-to-back 39-0 seasons in 2010 and 2011, including a record 90-game win streak? Nope.

If the four consecutive champions occur, Auriemma will simply rewrite the standards again.

Maybe being David will get you a Disney movie but being Goliath sure is harder to accomplish, clearing the higher and higher and impossibly higher bars that Auriemma kept raising, often with bravado and sarcasm.

Ask any player across the decades how they wound up not just at UConn and not just pushed beyond what they perceived possible but beyond what was even needed to win every single game, and they'll tell you it's Geno and his barbs, Geno and his insults, Geno and his dreaded silent treatment.

Breanna Stewart is perhaps the best player in college basketball history and Auriemma ignored her for nearly a week this season for unexplained reasons. Stewart told reporters she thinks it was his way of making sure she wouldn't get complacent, but she's not sure. Regardless, she didn't get complacent, so that part worked.

Mind you, this was in the middle of 50-, 60-point blowouts and a run for a fourth consecutive national title.

"He's a guy who can press all types of buttons," Stewart told the New York Post.

That's Auriemma's style, though, he's not really concerned with player feelings or how other coaches do things or anything other than pushing the envelope and making everyone push it back. Much is made of him having the best players and this year he does – the top three picks in the WNBA draft may all be Huskies.

He doesn't get them all, though. Tennessee used to get more than its share. Duke and Stanford and Notre Dame too. Brittney Griner went to Baylor. Auriemma's place isn't for everyone, and more importantly everyone isn't for him.

Consider Stewart, who hailed from North Syracuse, N.Y., and as a kid attended Orange games with her dad, sharing stadium nachos and rooting on the team she'll try to destroy Tuesday night.

As a high school junior Stewart went to Storrs on a recruiting visit and attended a game between UConn and Duke, which was also a finalist for her services. It was a big game. The Blue Devils were unbeaten and ranked No. 3 at the time.

There was no question Stewart was good enough to play for UConn, but was she right for UConn? She was a shy kid then, supposedly lacking a killer instinct. Auriemma was willing to risk losing the best player in America to find out if she could handle his style of coaching, a take-it-or-leave-it tactic that contrasts the pleading, placating tactics of some other coaches.

Stewart was seated directly behind the Huskies bench and before the game, Auriemma recalled this week, he confidently engaged her.

"So, whoever wins tonight, that's where you're going to go to school?"

Stewart just smiled. UConn jumped out to a 23-2 lead. Sometime in the middle of that run, Auriemma looked at Stewart and pointed down to the Duke bench.

"You probably should go there, they could use you right now," he told her.

The Huskies won 81-57, but the entire ploy could have backfired. Dismissive, cocky and demanding may work on some Philly playground but not always with teenage girls. It could just as easily build sympathy for Duke. It also may be the only way to run a program capable of winning so many championships.

After the game Stewart waited for Auriemma outside the UConn locker room

"I want to come to Connecticut," she said.

"She's got a lot of guts, Stewy does," Auriemma said. "And you know what we talk about on our team a lot is courage. … We've tried to explain to them that old saying that Winston Churchill said, 'Courage is grace under fire.' It's not the absence of fear. It's being able to do what you have to do while you're afraid.

"And I think Stewy has been as good as anybody that's ever played basketball at being able to do exactly what she has to do while being afraid," Auriemma said.

So, yes, the wins and titles are piling up, but don't confuse commonplace for ease. Don't confuse success with simple. Don't miss the totality of what's being accomplished.

Women's college basketball is about as level of a playing field as you can find in America. This isn't the lopsided world of business or politics. There are endless rules designed to create competitiveness. There are no Sam Gilbert's. Any coach or university can build a power quickly – Oregon State, which UConn vanquished in the semifinals, went from a team featuring just two scholarship players to a Final Four in six short seasons.

This isn't Walmart forever overwhelming some mom-and-pop hardware store. Tennessee was once Walmart. UConn was nothing – "Do I miss those days?" Auriemma said. "Sometimes. I mean, sometimes I think back to how much fun it was to be in that situation …" Then again, he isn't that nostalgic. "I don't miss the days when I didn't have Stewy, Moriah [Jefferson] and [Morgan] Tuck."

He can afford to laugh. As tough as future days will be without them, he survived losing Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore. He'll prod and dare more stars to come and who knows where it leads. Four consecutive titles, why not six? This season's 39.9 points-per-game margin of victory, why not get over 40? The 90-game victory streak? Why not 100? Why not 150?

This is what every team, every business, every family should aspire.

So don't spend Tuesday hoping for UConn to get worse. Appreciate that it's better than anyone thought a women's basketball team could be – and then wonder which buttons Geno Auriemma will push to get even better.