Considering that much of my time is spent on reporting on the winners and losers of women's basketball games, it is easy to get caught up into the trap of referring to devastating losses or heartbreaking defeats.

With all due respect to UConn and the Connecticut Sun, the reminder of what is truly important came in form of an e-mail yesterday informing me and other members of the media that the wife of Connecticut Sun coach Scott Hawk passed away at the age of 52. Forget UConn's losses to LSU in the 2007 regional finals or to Stanford in the 2008 national semifinals or even the knee injuries suffered by Mel Thomas, Kalana Greene and Caroline Doty in the last couple of years, there could be no more devastating a loss than the one the Hawk family suffered.

Suddenly Scott Hawk, a good coach and a better man, is a widow and his children are without a mother. Age 52 is just too young an age to referring to somebody in the past tense. Somehow, the players will take to the court tonight against Detroit, a key game for both teams in the tightly-contested Eastern Conference playoff race. Unfortunately, my duties as the lead writer for the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament will prevent me for being there but knowing with high esteem with which the Connecticut Sun players hold Scott Hawk, I expect they will do everything in their power to win the game in honor of the Hawk family. If they don't, you will not be reading in this blog what a "devastating loss" the Connecticut Sun suffered.