Author Recounts A Classic UConn Women's Game

You know you are among only the most loyal and dedicated fans of UConn women’s basketball when everyone refers to the players – past and present – by their first names.

So it was all about Shea, Diana, Sue, Svetlana and, of course, Geno, when sportswriter Jeff Goldberg shared his insights and opinions about the women Huskies Wednesday at the .

Goldberg, who covered the women’s team for the Hartford Courant from 2001 to 2006, has just released his book, “Bird at the Buzzer: The Greatest Women’s Game Ever Played.”  He had the full attention of 40 die-hard Husky fans as he read passages from the work about the watershed game that took place ten years ago this month on March 6, 2001.

 Goldberg told his audience that the events of that Big East championship game against Notre Dame – one that ended with point guard Sue Bird’s last-second game-winning shot – added up to “a night unlike any there has ever been for UConn, before or since.”

 The game became perhaps the first classic moment of women’s basketball history – a history Goldberg wanted to honor as a way of acknowledging that the sport has come into its own. The game still reverberates today.

 Last Tuesday, in fact, just before the UConn women met Notre Dame for this year’s NCAA championship game, someone asked Notre Dame star guard Skylar Diggins if she recalled the 2001 game, Goldberg said. (She would have been about ten years old at the time.)

He went on to quote her as saying: "I remember I was a fan watching it. I believe Sue Bird hit the shot and they wrote a book about it. I don't like that book."

So at the final game this year, Goldberg signed a copy of his book and gave it to the head of media for Notre Dame, hoping he could pass it to the student player. He inscribed it “Don’t judge a book by its cover” which, in this case, features a photo of Sue Bird a moment after her historic shot.

 (Since NCAA rules frown on gifts for student athletes, the peace offering may not actually be delivered until after graduation, Goldberg told his audience. “Rules are rules.”)

Goldberg talks about the 2001 game as though it were yesterday – a function of having watched and re-watched it hundreds of times in the course of his research. Often he watched it with players from the game, many of whom (including Bird) had never seen it, he said.

Three people in Wednesday’s crowd had also attended the game and, like Goldberg, grew somber as they remember All-American Shea Ralph’s career-ending knee injury in the first half. “Her valiant career was over right in front of our eyes,” Goldberg said. Now, as a UConn assistant coach, “Shea has lost none of her ability to intimidate,” he said.

The other crowd favorite, Diana Taurasi, was a brash and undisciplined freshman during the 2001 game, not the unstoppable starter she later became. Goldberg said he was not surprised to learn that Taurasi, now a polished professional and Olympian, was recently cleared of a charge of using a performance-enhancing drug.

“I could not picture Diana Taurasi standing in front of a mirror and saying ‘I need something that will give me an edge,’” Goldberg said. “She knows she is the best player. She is never going to be worried about whether she is the best.”

Goldberg, who now writes about the Red Sox and Boston Bruins for Metro Boston, spent about 45 minutes answering questions about everything from the quality of officiating to what coach Geno Auriemma is like at a press conference.

One question he could not answer: Geno and Pat. What happened there?

(Well, he could tip-toe around the subject of the falling out between Auriemma and Tennessee’s head coach Pat Summit, but, like most everyone else, said he does not know what caused Summit’s decision to drop UConn, her team’s arch rival, from the Lady Vols schedule.)

Goldberg’s visit to Tolland was the third of a series sponsored by the Tolland Public Library Foundation. According to Kate Farrish, secretary of the foundation and Goldberg’s former colleague at The Courant, the series is made possible with a grant from the Phoebe Dimock King and Elizabeth C. King Eaton Endowment.

The endowment was created in 2009 through a bequest from the late Elizabeth C. King Eaton. The benefactor was raised in Tolland and like her mother, the late Phoebe Dimock King, spent her professional life as a librarian.

Goldberg is next scheduled to appear at a book-signing March 20 at the .