NEW "MISERABLE" EXPERIENCE

Duke is about to complete a perfect regular season.
Tennessee has the nation's best player in Candace Parker.

UConn? The Huskies still have Geno.

Remember UConn? Four national championships between 2000-2004? Yeah, them.

The Huskies have been mushing under the radar this season. Two losses within the span of ten days in early January deflected all the attention away from the program that's already won more national titles this decade (four) than most schools will the entire 21st century. But UConn still has Geno Auriemma .

I'll admit, I love Geno. In the stulftifyingly diplomatic world of women's college basketball, Geno is the champion of Women's Glib. Here's what he had to say before tonight's game here in Piscataway against Rutgers about their fans and New Jersey folk in general:

"(They're) born miserable and stay miserable all their life."

I find myself more in agreement with what Geno said than his noun and modifier (their lives) were. Tonight I spent the entire game sitting right in front of a Rutgers fan who was doing her best impersonation of the Aunt Linda character from Saturday Night Live :

"Fer cryin' out loud!"
"Oh, gaaaaaaaaaaah!"
"Three seconds! Are you kidding me?"

Women's college basketball is mostly a clique of female overlords (notice, now, I didn't type "knitting circle") who might as well hold an annual early-season tournament called "Coaches Vs. Candor". Geno, on the other hand, speaks his mind. And, mostly, he is just having a laugh, anyway. He'd be dismissed as a clown if his teams didn't win so much.

So after tonight's game, when someone asked him why he hated New Jersey so much, Geno replied, "I don't hate anybody. I'm a peace-loving guy. Raised in the Sixties, you know. Peace, love and rock and roll.

"I love the Jersey shore. I love my house (the Auriemmas spend every August at their beach house in a south Jersey haven). I love Bruce Springsteen. I love The Sopranos ."

Geno gets it. It's just a game. Have fun. And if you don't have an undefeated record or the nation's best player--and UConn has often had either or both in the past--when facing your most acrimonious opponent, well then, hate is enough to fill our lives with love.