The 1950s were a predictably conservative era at tiny Wayland Baptist University, on the high plains of West Texas, where women could not wear shorts even to walk to the gym from their dormitories.

And yet, long before Connecticut became a dominant power in women’s basketball, the Flying Queens of Wayland Baptist thrived on innovation, talent and glamour, playing on athletic scholarships, traveling by private planes, warming up with ostentatious drills learned from the Harlem Globetrotters and winning every game for nearly five seasons.

Although UConn can match U.C.L.A.’s major-college record of 88 consecutive victories Sunday against Ohio State at Madison Square Garden, the Huskies remain far short of the 131 straight games that Wayland Baptist won from 1953 to ’58  a streak that began early in the first term of the Eisenhower administration, remained aloft as McDonald’s golden arches first appeared along with Dear Abby and Frisbees, then fell from orbit two months after Sputnik.

Wayland’s unsurpassed but little-known streak began nearly two decades before the legislative decree known as Title IX prohibited sex discrimination in education in 1972, and nearly three decades before the N.C.A.A. began sponsoring women’s basketball in 1982.