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The Daily Dose/March 9, 2010
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...
BATTLE OF THE SEXES: Monday we found ourselves participating in a rather short, almost interesting discussion about the University of Connecticut's women's basketball team, which Sunday night had defeated Syracuse in the Big East Conference tournament for their 70th straight win, tying them for the NCAA women's Division I record.
Breaking News: On Monday night the Huskies won their 71st straight game, 59-44 over Notre Dame in the semifinals of the Big East conference tournament.
The conversation, again almost interesting, centered on what the highest men's level was they could be competitive at.
The participants in the conversation agreed that even an average Division I or II team could probably name the score against them. One participant said they would be competitive against a Division III team. We disagreed and even said that the best boys high school team would not have too difficult a time against them, especially the way prep basketball is played at the highest level nowadays, where private basketball academies affiliate themselves with a private school and recruit the very best players. Most of these schools have several D-I prospects and the feeling here is they would beat the UConn women's team.
Disclaimer: This is neither criticism nor an indictment! As such, we don't want any of you Women's Libbers out there pestering us with complaints about how sexist we are. Men are bigger and faster than women. It's okay. It's the way the world is built.
Seventy Times Seven: Seventy consecutive wins is not uncharted waters for the Huskies, who also won 70 in a row from 2001-03. They have won six national championships, including last year's.
Gratuitous Writer's Shack Fave Mention: UConn is not the only school to hold the two longest winning streaks in a sport. Our Mount Union Purple Raiders have the two longest winningest streaks in the history of NCAA football: 55 (2000-03) and 54 games (1996-99).
Still To Come: The Huskies are still chasing two NCAA records: the all-division women's winning streak of 81 games by D-III Washington University of St. Louis (1998-2001) and the all-division, all-gender winning streak of 88 games by UCLA from 1971-74.
Can We Get Back On Message Here? The discussion left us curious as to how the very best women's performances compare with their male counterparts, so as we are prone to do here at the Writer's Shack, we did some research.
To do this we needed a sport where performance can be objectively measured, and we weren't in too much of a mood to produce the seminal work on the matter, so we settled on results from 100 meters at last year's NCAA track and field championships.
On Your Mark: In 2009 Alexandria Anderson of Texas won the D-I women's 100 meter dash in 11.20 seconds, a fairly average time in a decade where the fastest time by a champion was 10.97 seconds and the slowest 11.34 seconds.
Question: So, how would that do against the men? In what division would 11.20 be a respectable showing?
Answer: Not in Divisions I or II, where 10.38 and 10.48 respectively were the times for the last place finishers in the finals in 2009.
OTOH: 11.20 however, would be good for a respectable seventh place in the D-III men's 100 meter race, which was won in 10.51 seconds.
Dry, Technical Matter: The women's NCAA record of 10.78, done by Dawn Sowell of LSU in 1989, would have good for fourth place in the 2009 D-III men's 100 meter race.
Dry, Technical Matter II: The national high school record in the boys 100 meters is 10.15 seconds by Henry Neal of Greenville, Texas, done in 1990.
Oh Yeah: We've also had this rather useless argument in football, where one yahoo we know once blabbed the Florida Gators would beat the Detroit Lions, who were then in the process of going winless. We said no, the Lions, being a professional team, albeit a bad professional team, would name the score against the best college football team.
RIP: Mary Josephine Ray, the oldest known American, died Sunday in a New Hampshire nursing at the age of 114 years, 294 days.
Ray was born on May 17, 1895 in Prince Edward Island, Canada during the Bowell administration and moved to the United States in 1898 during the McKinley administration. Ray had been a widow since 1967.
USA! USA! The pressure of being the oldest living American now falls on one Neva Morris, of Ames, Iowa, who is 114 years, 217 days.
The oldest person in the world is Japan's Kama Chinen. She is 114 years, 302 days.
Uh-Oh Guys: Of the 100 oldest people in world history whose ages can be verified, only ten (10) were men.
GREAT MOMENTS IN SLAVERY: The US Supreme Court, on this date in 1841, rules that a group of Africans who had been taken captive had been taken into slavery illegally, as if anyone in human history has legally been taken into slaverly.
The ruling stemmed from a June, 1839 incident where 49 slaves who where being held in a ship leaving Havana, Cuba seized control of that ship. The captain and a few others were killed and a couple of others escaped and two crewmen who could steer the ship were spared because the Africans needed someone to take them home.
Instead, they sailed the ship to New York, where both the ship and the slaves were taken into custody. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that decreed the original transport of the captives across the Atlantic had been illegal and directed the US government transport the Africans back home.
Thought For The Day: I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. - Margaret Thatcher
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Liberia is the African nation founded by freed American slaves. It's flag has eleven red and white stripes and a blue field in the upper left corner that has a single white star in it. The capital is Monrovia.
Today's Stumper: Connecticut is one of five schools to win multiple NCAA women's basketball titles. Who are the others? - Answer next time!
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