UConn's historic 89th consecutive win played before almost 1.2 million viewers on Tuesday night.
ESPN2's Dec. 21 coverage of the Huskies' 93-62 trouncing of No. 20 Florida State netted a 0.9 household average, 878,000 households and 1.17 million watchers on average, according to Nielsen data. Geno Auriemma and Maya Moore's team supplanted the 88-game winning streak of Coach John Wooden's 1971-74 UCLA Bruins.
Tuesday's telecast ranks as the second-highest regular season or conference tournament women's basketball game on ESPN networks over the last six seasons, behind Tennessee-Oklahoma on Feb. 2, 2009, when the Sooners won 80-70 and temporarily denied Tennessee coach Pat Summitt's 1000th win.
Locally, UConn's triumph notched an 18.1 rating in the Hartford-New Haven area, the best since March 2003, when Villanova ended the Huskies then-70 game winning skein in the Big East Conference final. The Dec. 21 telecast out-delivered the 17.6 local mark for UConn's second-straight NCAA title, when it beat Stanford in the final.
Speaking of the Cardinal, UConn will visit Tara VanDerveer, who just won her 800th game, and her team at Maples Pavilion on Dec. 30, a contest that will be televised on ESPN2 at 9 p.m. (ET). Should the Huskies prevail as expected over Pacific on Dec. 28, the meeting with Stanford, which was the last team to defeat UConn on April 6, 2008 in the national semifinal, would be a battle to push the streak to 91.
Stanford has won 50 games in a row at home.
