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Evina Westbrook said she's "anxious and excited" about the upcoming game at Tennessee. Said she spoken a bit with the team about the scout though focus is right now on Butler.
— Alexa Philippou (@alexaphilippou) January 18, 2021
When asked if she's still in touch or has friends down there, she said "no."
Evina Westbrook got candid with us in post-game, said changes need to be made to the program off the court, specifically in the #LadyVols coaching staff. pic.twitter.com/iJjVXlWI4z
— Jordan Crammer (@JordanCrammer) March 23, 2019
By David in Naples
There are holes in their lineup and stats for sure. Turnovers total 140 given and 140 taken away. UConn is 156 vs 108 in a positive way. Three point shooting is 37.2% for NC State and 34.1% for the Huskies. They score 82 points a game versus UConn at 87 per game. Their best player is 6'5" Elissa Cunane, who leads the team in points (16.2 per), rebounds (7.5 per) and blocked shots (14). Very much like Olivia for the Huskies who averages 16.3 in points, 7.7 in rebounds and also has 14 blocks.
NC State's season was paused for Covid reasons on January 5th. They are back in action and the game of the season will be February 1st against Louisville. That game is at Louisville and will be the biggest test for the Wolfpack and the Cardinals. Watch it on ESPN2 at 7pm.
Go Huskies..!!
Winning streaks
I recently talked about the active home winning streaks, and now I want to talk about overall winning streaks, which include home, away and neutral courts. Before going into the currently active overall winning streak, let’s talk about winning streaks in history.
Without looking it up, what would you expect to be longer — an overall winning streak or a home winning streak? It’s a mildly interesting question. A home winning streak has a couple of related advantages. Almost all teams do better at home, so a better winning percentage means a better chance at having a long streak. In addition, for good teams involved in long streaks, they are likely to make the postseason tournaments, where the competition gets exceedingly tougher, and by definition, only one team from each postseason tournament can end the season with a winning streak still alive. That’s an advantage for home winning streaks — a loss in a postseason tournament doesn’t end the streak as long as it’s not a loss in the first two games for a host team.
However, you would expect a long streak to be associated with a particularly strong team and looking at home games only means you are ignoring more than half the games. If you want a particularly long string it will cover multiple seasons and looking at home games only throws out a lot of games.
Even when you look at the results the answer is not quite as simple as simply identifying the longest streak for home and overall. The longest overall streak is the UConn team between 2014 and 2017, with 111 consecutive victories. The longest home winning streak is, well UConn, with 99 consecutive victories. Interestingly, the time periods are different as the home winning streak started in 2006 and ended in 2011 so doesn’t even overlap the overall winning streak.
So the answer to the simple question has the answer that the longest overall streak is longer than the longest home streak, but as soon as we start looking down the list we see something interesting.
The second longest overall streak is, yes, UConn with 90, while the second longest home winning streak is, yes again, UConn with 98. This means if you throw out the single best from each category as an outlier, the second-longest home winning streak is longer than the second-longest overall. That’s also true of the third longest in each category. The third longest all-time is, you guessed it, UConn at 70, but the third longest home streak is a new name, Stanford at 82.
Suppose you decide to throw out the first 10 in each category and look at the 11th longest overall streak. Yes, that’s UConn at 36 games. The 11th longest home is Baylor at 56.
I think the data suggests that in general, home winning streaks can be longer than overall winning streaks which makes UConn’s 111 overall winning streak all that more special.
Enough about history, what’s the current situation?
The current active overall winning streak is 22 games held by Princeton. In second place is UConn at 16 games. While Princeton is not going to lose any games, neither are they going to win any games, so they are going to be stuck at 22, and may begin to add to it next season. They might well get through their entire regular season next year without a loss. UConn, barring an upset, ought to take over the front running status if they can get a few games in, but they have California Baptist and NC State at 15 games nipping at their heels. The challenge with an overall winning streak is that you don’t win the national championship, it’s over, so while I expect UConn to take over from Princeton in the near future, if they are unable to win the national championship, Princeton may start the next season as the holder of the longest active winning streak.
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