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Richard Stevens: Losing to UConn could help UNM

By Richard Stevens
Saturday, March 17, 2007

Don't fool yourself, New Mexico. The East Coast doesn't know squat about University of New Mexico basketball.

Lobos men or Lobos women.

The East Coast media and fan interest out here is all about, well, East Coast basketball.

The second choice is Midwest hoops. Next it's the South. Then there is a big leapfrog to those teams over on the West Coast.

The East Coast bias skips right over the great Southwest and conferences like Mountain West, Western Athletic or Big Sky.

If you want some prime-time TV time for anything Southwest, you might find it on that thin scoreboard that runs on the bottom of ESPN telecasts.

The talking heads above that ticker line are talking about Duke, Syracuse, Indiana, Georgetown, Boston College, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida.

The closest they get to the Southwest is Kansas, Texas, Texas Tech or Arizona. Sure, Arizona is Southwest, but really it is Pac-10, which is West Coast. Texas Tech is really Bobby Knight.

And all that talk is really about the men's bracket.

The Lobos women have two NCAA hurdles to jump in order to be noticed:

They are Southwest.

They aren't in the men's bracket.

But maybe on Tuesday, Don Flanagan's New Mexico Lobos can steal a little East Coast attention.

Maybe they can get on ESPN2 and get squashed by Geno Auriemma's Connecticut Huskies in the second round of the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament.

We think it would be a good thing.

"A lot of people on the East Coast who don't normally get to see us would get to know the New Mexico program, and that would be great for us," said Flanagan, whose No. 8 seed Lobos must get past No. 9 seed Wisconsin-Green Bay at 5 p.m. Sunday.

"If recruits see that New Mexico played Connecticut in the NCAA Tournament, that's big. It doesn't get any bigger than that. It would be fun if it happens."

Well, it might not be fun. It might be painful.

UConn is to women's basketball what Duke is to men's basketball. Only more dominant.

UConn has produced 10 first-team All-Americans in Auriemma's 21 years at the school - superstars like Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Rebecca Lobo.

UConn has won five national titles. The Lobos have won only one NCAA Tournament game outside The Pit.

The gap between a UConn at the women's level and an eighth or ninth seed is much wider than the same gap in the men's game.

The UNM/Wisconsin winner is expected to be crushed by the No. 1 seed Huskies.

But it will get noticed.

"Having a chance to play against somebody big again would be really special for us," said UNM senior forward Timi E-Nunu. "It doesn't get much bigger than UConn."

It doesn't get much tougher, either.