HARTFORD, Conn. _ In the afterglow of a historic night, cheering fans held signs marked with "90" and the XL Center video board displayed messages from Huskies of the recent past.
Amid the revelry, Geno Auriemma was grinning. His current team matched a revered record set by one of his former teams and the UConn women's basketball coach seized another milestone for his Hall of Fame career.
Yet the number and the record _ 90 wins in a row _ was less important than what the old coach witnessed. With history at stake against a ranked opponent, UConn left nothing to chance and was better than it has been all season.
The Huskies, a team full of surprises for the past two months, were dominant from beginning to end, at both ends of the floor, in every facet of the game. For a guy who demands effort and passion and execution, win No. 90 was a thing of beauty.
"We played like a team that was, tonight anyway, on a mission to do something that was really important to them," Auriemma said after a 102-37 win over South Florida.
Here's a thing to remember from this win: USF (13-2) is ranked 20th in the country and is among the class of the American Athletic Conference, at least in the non-UConn division. This is a team Auriemma cautioned his team about, an opponent that seemed capable of at least challenging the Huskies.
But UConn (15-0) was simply overwhelming. After hearing about the winning streak for the past week, the players made an emphatic statement.
They scored the game's first nine points, they led by 24 after the first quarter and by 46 at halftime. They held USF to 26.5 percent shooting in the first 20 minutes while shooting 66.7 percent at the other end.
They executed passes and shots. They scrambled for loose balls with the game already out of reach and were contesting shots even as their advantage was swelling.
The margin of victory was 65 points, matching the largest spread of any game during the streak. It was also the largest margin of victory against a ranked team in school history.
Senior Saniya Chong, who has been on the team for all 90 wins, scored 20 points to lead a balanced offense. But she also played well defensively and helped set the pace with a high-energy performance.
The team's overall performance was like a tribute to everything Auriemma values.
"Not to minimize any of this, but we just try to play really, really, really hard every night and we try to play with a lot of energy every night," Auriemma said. "And we have players that have bought into, over the years, this is the way we're going to play, this is the way we play at Connecticut."
