ron allen is there. >> reporter: practice before a game is usually closed. but this morning, the university of connecticut wanted everyone to have a good look at its women's basketball team winning their 88th straight game on sunday tying record sent by ucla's men's team and their coach back in the 1970s. tonight uconn goes for 89, led by maya moore whose mother put a basketball in her hands when she was just 3 years old. >> it's been the hardest thing i've ever done in my life but it's been so rewarding. >> reporter: the last time they lost was in april of 2008. and during that winning streak, they've dominated. beating their opponents by an average of about 33 points a game. they're champions. their president is a fan. >> back-to-back national championship ball. >> reporter: but they are still a team fighting for respect. >> if we were breaking a woman's record everybody would say, aren't they nice and give them one line on the bottom of espn and send them back. send them where they belong, in the kitchen. >> reporter: "new york times" sports writer has he

here's nbc's ron allen. >> reporter: it is a crime that has police in long island, new york, baffled. and residents very concerned. during a training exercise last saturday, police discovered a female body in the brush by the side of a road along a sandy beach. but that was just the beginning. days later they found a second set of human remains. >> we started going eastbound, and we found the second -- the third body, and then ultimately the fourth body. all within about 500 feet of each other. >> reporter: four decomposed bodies. hidden there for perhaps as long as 18 months, police say. and possibly by the same serial killer. evoking memories of the case of joel rifkin, a long island resident convicted of killing at least nine women in new york in the early 1990s. while scores of officers and dogs searched a ten-mile stretch of highway, police tried to calm the public. >> i don't want anybody to think that we have a jack the ripper running around suffolk county with blood dripping from a knife. >> reporter: police believe the victims could be female prostitutes. like a woman last se

ann, back to you. >> ron allen this morning. ron, thanks. >>> new unemployment numbers in for november show job growth slowed to a sluggish 39,000, a sharp drop from the 172,000 jobs created in october. the unemployment rate jumped from 9.6% to 9.8%, the highest it's been since april. 15.1 million americans are now out of work. >>> there is life on earth, but it's a bit alien to us. nasa announced on thursday that they have discovered a new form of life in a lake. it is the only known organism that does not have fossils in its dna. this microbe uses poisonous arsenic instead, and nasa says it revolutionizes the search for life outside our planet. >>> it was not a happy homecoming for lebron james in cleveland last night where his former fans rammed the all-star in his first game back at the q since joining the miami heat. he scored 38 points, taking his new team to victory and even did a powder toss at the top of the game amid the booing of the crowd. said lebron, "there's no hurt feelings. i wish them the best." apparently, the

nbc's ron allen is in new jersey with more on this story. ron, good morning. >> reporter: good morning to you, ann. if you look behind me you can see a blue tarp on the roof of that house. that's where a tree came crashing into it yesterday. fortunately no one was home at the time. in this region wind gusts were clocked near 60 miles an hour. there was driving rain, a powerful storm that brought a real blast of winter. it's the first major snowfall of the season in western new york state. with this lake-effect snow warning now through friday accumulations from 8 to 16 inches expected. snow is just the latest act of a storm that began by unleashing tornadoes on the southeast earlier this week. more than 50 homes destroyed outside atlanta, georgia. a fast moving and powerful storm then blanketed the east coast with strong wind and soaking rain. up to several inches in some areas. whipping up waves along the shore causing severe flooding in pittsburgh and mud slides in north carolina that sent a house sliding more than 40 feet down a hill knock