Storrs — In their minds they're going to (play) Carolina, the biggie Monday night, the one that would give the UConn women their 100th straight win. Against No. 6 South Carolina. And leave it to coach Geno Auriemma to invite everyone to Gampel to ...

Watch UConn lose.

Yes, some of Geno's streams of consciousness sounded like they belonged on scrolls somewhere after Saturday's 83-41 win over SMU:

"I've said this before a hundred times," he said. "We're going to lose. Could be Monday. Could be next weekend. The following weekend. We're going to lose. It's not if. It's when. Of course we're going to lose. What is it that never loses? I mean, the sand at the beach loses to the ocean. Because that son of a (gun) just keeps coming all the time. So (the sand) just sits there and thinks it's safe. No you're not. Everything loses at some point. It's not going to last forever.

"More people should start coming to our games," Geno said. "You want to be here when that 'L' comes. And say 'I was there.' This place should be packed Monday night. I want to see it. I want to see them lose. I've had enough of their wins. I want to write a story that says 'UConn lost.' Some people have been covering sports a long time and never had a chance to write that. So it might be Monday. So don't miss it."

Will they lose Monday? Put it this way: Which way would you be betting?

This will be the biggest story in sports during Monday's news cycle. A hundred straight. Fervent wish: The folks conveying the narrative don't become so engulfed in a number that they forget all the little things that built the foundation of this fortress.

Auriemma unwittingly alluded to it Saturday, talking about what he expects of his players: "get better at things that don't come naturally."

And what if all of us tried that?

What if we all worked on whatever doesn't come naturally?

Wouldn't we become better people?

Makes you think, no?

"People do get enamored over things that are unusual. It's unusual the situation we're in," Auriemma said. "Leading to this point, it's been 'ho hum, Connecticut won another game. Big deal, Call me when they lose.' So we've kind of not been affected by any of the wins or by what people think. Now that we're getting close to a number that seems to be significant for whatever reason and more people are paying attention.

"Maybe that gives people a chance to look at our program and say 'well how did they get here? How does this happen? And how does it happen this often?' You can't just keep saying they have no competition. That might have been true when we had Tina (Charles) and Maya (Moore). That might have been true when we had Stewie (Breanna Stewart) and them. Even though it wasn't. So when does it start being 'they're actually pretty good at what they do.' Because they keep doing it. It's not a once in a lifetime thing. Maybe people will ask, 'what are they doing?' They've used everything else. They get the best players. They have no competition. They play in a bad league. I heard that when Rebecca (Lobo) was here. All we can do is play."

Once again, the Huskies are providing women's basketball with freakish exposure. One school official said Saturday UConn women's ratings on SNY have exceeded the Nets on YES and the Knicks on MSG. Wait till you see ESPN's presentation all day Monday. Women's hoops everywhere. So the haters can keep hating. But in the spirit of "just don't spell my name wrong," the Huskies are the epicenter of the women's sports revolution.

"I don't know how anything that's really good can be that bad, you know?" Auriemma said. "The attention that we bring to the game, that's got to be a positive, not a negative. I can't do anything about what people say. All I know is – somebody said this one time – any kind of publicity is good publicity. So we're getting a lot of people that really appreciate what we're doing and we're getting people that are paying attention, saying it's bad for women's basketball. But they're paying attention enough to say that."

And while we've had enough of the mindless comparisons between Auriemma and John Wooden and the UConn women and UCLA men, can anyone honestly deny that more people have paid attention to UConn, simply because of a more media-centric era?

"If you had an opinion 50 years ago, it took a long time for that opinion to reach anybody's ears that mattered," Auriemma said. "Now with the push of a button, your opinion is out there for everybody to see. And more people have an opinion.

"It's hard to have an opinion of UCLA when you never saw them play. That's why I get a kick out people telling me 'you're not John Wooden, you're not UCLA.' I'm like 'you couldn't tell me what UCLA stands for.' I could put you a mile from their campus and you wouldn't know where it was. You never saw them play. You don't know who they beat, how they got to the Final Four or how they won championships. You just know 'I hate women's basketball and you're not UCLA.' I get that. But back then, the game of college basketball wasn't viewed as it is today. And there was no competition, if you think about it."

There will be competition here Monday night. Come watch. Maybe they'll lose. Geno said so.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.