Unrivaled: UConn, Tennessee, and the Twelve Years that Transcended Women's Basketball

by Jeff Goldberg, Rebecca Lobo (Foreword), Alysa Auriemma (Afterword)

For twelve years the women’s basketball rivalry between UConn and Tennessee was the most iconic matchup in women’s sports. Even now, twenty years since the annual series started, the competition between these two storied programs still provokes heated argument and bitter resentment.
Led by Hall of Fame coaches Geno Auriemma and Pat Summitt, UConn and Tennessee combined for nine national championships, with the UConn Huskies winning five—including four against the Tennessee Lady Vols. In all, UConn won thirteen of twenty-two matchups during the rivalry, and along the way the two coaches—with distinctive and brash personalities and a shared determination to rule their sport—clashed privately and publicly, generating enough heat to make women’s basketball relevant in the national sports landscape as never before.
On the court, the two teams produced a series of memorable games, from overtime thrillers to timeless classics that defined the sport. Off the court, the coaches’ encounters were often marked by their seemingly genuine dislike for each other, until the conflict reached a breaking point in 2007 and Summitt stunned the basketball world by canceling the series for reasons neither side has ever revealed.
Now, eight years after the last game, Unrivaled uncovers the on-court and behind-the-scenes story of this intensely personal rivalry between coaches, players, and the two most passionate fan bases women’s sports has ever known.
 

Genres: Basketball, Sports, Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2015

Reviews

[West Hartford Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who followed the UConn/Tennessee women's basketball rivalry beginning in 1995, this book is for you! Well-written, relatively impartial, and gripping, this book will bring back all the suspense and nostalgia created from the rivalry, which changed women's college basketball and elevated it to new heights. A must-read for any basketball fan, this book helps you to relive the series with all of its ups and downs!

[Robin Filipczak · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a UCONN basketball fan, this has been a really fun read while I'm on the University of Tennessee campus for a week.

[Chelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

It breaks my heart to rate this so middle of the road. I love the Lady Vols, I love Pat, I loved the UCONN rivalry.

Unforutnately, this book just did not deliver what I was expecting. I will say, the author did a phenomenal job being vert neutral towards both teams. Once I saw that he was a writer for UCONN, I expected a lot of shade to be thrown at Tennessee. However, he stuck to the facts and stayed objectibe throughout.

However, he failed to deliver too much outside information about the rivalry. He went into detail about how the rivalry game started, but this is information that you can mostly find online and on youtube. Then, much of the book is spent describing the games in detail. Which would have been fine if that wasn't the bulk of the book. Mainly we got game summaries with a couple anecdotes about the rivalry thrown in.

The book didn't offer too much new information that I didn't already know. I also felt like he really underutilized the player's accounts. There was not as much drama or insightful knowledge as I had hoped.

So, while I loved the writing style and his ability to be objective, there just wasn't enough information about the rivalry to be fresh and new.

[Conor Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't start to follow women's basketball until around 2012, so this book was great to read in order to understand how women's basketball started to become more popular, particularly between these two teams. It gives in depth detail in the games UCONN and Tennessee played for over a decade, while giving you interviews from both teams' players and coaches about how certain game scenarios occurred and some backstory about leading up to the annual game. The fallout between Pat and Geno was interesting to read. For someone looking to learn about how the game started to grow and the minds between these two programs, it's a nice read.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of the Tennessee-UConn rivalry, the people who were a part of it, and the impact that it had on the game.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unrivaled: UConn, Tennessee, and the Twelve Years That Transcended Women's Basketball by Jeff Goldberg (University of Nebraska Press 2015) (796.32363). The Lady Vols versus the UConn Huskies, and Pat Summit versus Geno Auriemma. The Southern Firecracker and the Yankee Blowhard. It was great fun while the rivalry lasted. My rating; 7/10, finished 6/3/15.

[Julie Robinson lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it because I'm a huge Tennessee/Pat Summitt fan, but it was a little repetitive and I wish there had been more personal stories about the coaches.