unrivaled
Reviewed by Joe Mullins
20 july 2015 archive
There are great rivalries throughout professional and collegiate sports. Sports fans thrive on the games between great professional dynasties like the Yankees and Red Sox, and the annual college football grudge match between Alabama and Auburn. In Jeff Goldberg's book Unrivaled, he chronicles the greatest rivalry in women's college basketball – the University of Tennessee and the University of Connecticut. The happenchance creation of this rivalry elevated women's intercollegiate basketball from a little watched or televised sport to one with unexpected national prominence. At the rivalry's peak, a twelve year span of twenty-two Tennessee-UConn games saw the programs win a combined nine national championships and produce four undefeated seasons. In addition to all of the championship games and All-American players, the evolution of the relationship between head coaches Pat Summitt of UT and Geno Auriemma of UConn captivated the basketball world and elevated the women's game to new heights.
Goldberg details the rivalry in chronological order, devoting each chapter to one or two seasons. The first chapter of the book explains the unusual circumstances surrounding the creation of the series and the important role Carol Stiff, an ESPN programmer, and the all-sports network based in Bristol, Connecticut, played it its origins. The intense rivalry between the two teams was stressful for Summitt and Auriemma, yet both understood the annual showdowns were necessary to move women's basketball forward. The second chapter of the book provides a backstory for both teams before 1995 and includes a brief biography of each coach. Chapter two contains a slight error when describing Pat Summitt's childhood. Goldberg states that Summitt was the only daughter among five children when in fact she had a younger sister.
Chapters three through thirteen chronicle every game played during the series from 1995 through 2007. The strongest aspect of these chapters is how Goldberg incorporates stories about the star players of each team while describing the game and season results, while also illustrating the evolving relationship between Summitt and Auriemma. The early chapters in the book describe how UConn dominated the first several seasons in the rivalry with players such as Rebecca Lobo and Sue Bird. In particular, chapter four describes the well-chronicled recruitment and transfer of Michelle Marciniak to Tennessee and how UConn snapped Tennessee's 69-game home winning streak. Chapters five and six describe Tennessee's resurgent dominance in the rivalry while winning three national championships in a row from 1996 to 1998. Goldberg does an excellent job incorporating individual stories about the recruitment of great Tennessee players such as Chamique Holdclaw and Semeka Randall. Chapter six, which covers the 1998 and 1999 seasons, describes how Semeka "Boo" Randall fired the first verbal shot that would ramp up the rivalry on the court between the players and in the media between the coaches. Following a Tennessee victory, Randall stated, "I think Connecticut about ran off the floor, they were so scared." Goldberg explains in detail how Tennessee and UConn's recruitment of Randall in part triggered the comments.
Chapters seven through ten continue to chronicle the many games between Tennessee and UConn including an agreement to schedule two regular season games annually. Goldberg explains that neither coach had an interest in playing two regular season games but did so because it benefited women's basketball. These chapters detail the deterioration of the relationship between Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma. Goldberg shares with the reader the numerous verbal jabs Auriemma took at Summitt, including the labeling of Tennessee as the "Evil Empire." This part of the book also introduces the reader to one of the great players in UConn basketball history, Diana Taurasi. Goldberg not only provides examples of Taurasi's basketball feats, but also of her strained relationship with Auriemma.
Chapters 11 and 12 are devoted to the later years of the rivalry and feature the stories of legendary players like Tennessee's Candace Parker and UConn's Maya Moore. Chapter 13 vividly describes the downturn of the rivalry, driven mainly by the toll the game took on the head coaches, the verbal jabs that Auriemma took at Summitt, and the illegal recruiting violations Summitt, Tennessee, and the SEC leveled against Auriemma. These accusations ultimately let Summitt and Tennessee to discontinue the annual series with UConn. This final chapter in the book does a wonderful job describing the anger felt by basketball fans about the loss of the sport's marquee matchup, and the sadness felt across the American sports landscape when Pat Summitt announced on August 23, 2011, that she was suffering from early-onset dementia. Goldberg describes in detail how this announcement changed the entire relationship between Summitt and Auriemma with both coaches finally settling their differences.
A pleasant surprise in the book is the afterword written by Alysa Auriemma, daughter of Geno. She provides a heartfelt assessment of Pat Summitt's significance to women's basketball and how all basketball fans should be appreciative of her contributions to the game. These six pages of the book capture perfectly the importance of the Tennessee-Connecticut rivalry and why it is truly unrivaled in sport.
Jeff Goldberg. Unrivaled. University of Nebraska press: Lincoln and London, 2015. 234 pp; Foreword; Acknowledgements; 8 Black and White Photographs; Afterword; Appendix; $27.95 (hardcover)
Copyright © 2015 by Joe Mullins