UConn's basketball art

When Mrs. Last Honest and I first started dating in September 2000, she explained to me how Connecticut women's basketball worked ... namely that there would be a few other top teams that could give them a game, but they would blow the rest of them out.

And she was right. Following the UConn women -- and thanks to the Internet, we've been able to see their games that aren't televised nationally either on Connecticut Public Television, SNY or ESPN's streaming service -- has meant seeing a lot of games where the competitive portion lasts for five minutes if the opposition was lucky. (This year, I discovered that sometimes the most-entertaining part of the game is watching John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant on Twitter as he watches the game.)

But it has also meant seeing last night.

The competition in women's basketball isn't particularly deep. The Connecticut men winning the national championship as a seventh seed (and beating eighth-seeded Kentucky to do it) was implausible; the thought of a women's seven seed doing it is, at this time, unthinkable.

This, however, was Notre Dame -- the second-ranked team in the country, also undefeated, also crushing everything in its path and with a recent history of beating the Huskies to boot. So it wasn't a shock that even without Natalie Achonwa, the Irish whittled UConn's early big early lead to as low as five and ultimately seven by the end of the first half.

And then UConn came out in the second half and absolutely boat-raced Notre Dame. What shaped up as a possible classic instead became a coronation.

Yet whether it's against Notre Dame or the dregs of their schedule, when the UConn women are right, as they so frequently are, what they're doing is less basketball and more artistry, their competition less the players in the other uniforms and more the possibilities of what can be done on a basketball court ...as long as your definition of good basketball doesn't require male physical size, strength and athleticism.

Sometimes, this actually gets them in what passes for trouble. They can do so many things, it's almost like they sometimes feel a need to show them all, and the gears grind for a while. Last night, however, was no such problem. They threw the ball inside early and often, mostly to Stefanie Dolson and Breanna Stewart, because the Irish had nothing for them, and wouldn't have had enough even if Achonwa was playing.

When it works ... oh, when it works. The players have changed from Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi from when I started watching to Dolson, Stewart and the rest of this year's Huskies, but the way they pass, shoot, defend, run the floor and see ... see what's going on and make a play accordingly ... can be a joy to behold.

That's why I wish the people who say, "Who cares? They're just women" would stop caring that, yes, women are smaller, slower and less athletic than men (which is simple biology, that's all, not a sign of male superiority in all things) and actually watch the UConn women play.

Because they might just see a masterpiece.

The curious case of the double tickets

If you've gone to any decent number of sporting events, you've probably had this conversation at least once:

"You're in our seats."
"No we're not. These are our seats."
"No ... this is ..." followed by the section, seat and row.
"OK, let me check ..." 

Mrs. Last Honest and I had one of these conversations today at Gampel Pavilion before the UConn-Notre Dame women's basketball game today (Notre Dame 73, UConn 72 ...you don't need a three-pointer Kaleena! ... we should all want to be Kelly Faris when we grow up), and there was no reason to believe it wasn't going to end up like 99.99 percent of these conversations do.

One of us was going to realize we had the wrong row, section or seat -- like about 10 minutes later in our section because someone misread a G for a Q -- and there would be a "sorry about that," a slightly embarrassed smile and everyone would end up where they belonged.

Except that didn't happen. We both had the exact same seats.

Mrs. Last Honest bought me the tickets for Christmas on StubHub. (What would have made this whole exercise even crazier is if I had bought her tickets to the same game for Christmas, which I was contemplating.) The other husband in this little adventure got them in his stocking for Christmas from his daughter. He didn't know how she had gotten them, but given they were identical to ours except ours were in color and his were in black and white (which actually is important later), I knew she had gotten them the same way.

Mrs. Last Honest and I got to the game first, so when I was chatting with the guy who would soon become my new best friend for the next little while, he said that when they scanned his tickets, they told him those seats had already been scanned, but when he went to the box office to inquire what was going on, they let him in anyway.

Since lap-sitting was clearly out of the question, the two of us set off to solve the problem, first enlisting help of arena staff, who sent us to a manager. The manager was convinced he had the solution ... that the black-and-white tickets clearly had to be a photocopy. Yup, aside from the complete lack of logic of such a conspiracy on our parts, there apparently was no consideration given to the possibility of us having a color printer and them having one that only printed in black and white.

So it was off to the box office we went, where ... they were utterly convinced his tickets were a photocopy.

Seriously.

I'm sure for the outside observer, there would have been considerable comedic value in watching us repeatedly (as in we had to do it more than once) tell the people in the box office that we had not met until just a few minutes ago. Fortunately, we got through to them (and I don't mean to portray all the Gampel staff as dunces ... they were actually very friendly throughout), and they found another couple tickets for our friends a few rows in front of us, so except for the result of the game, everyone lived happily ever after.

Well, except for maybe one person ...

Remember a few paragraphs back when I mentioned that, other than the color, the two sets of tickets were identical? That even extends to a name and account number on the printed ticket, so we have a pretty decent idea of who sold the same tickets twice. Now, it may have been an honest mistake -- that'll be up to UConn and StubHub to find out after we inform them -- but if two season tickets at Gampel are suddenly available, you'll know why.