Calm, cool and collected
Huskies begin national title defense composed and confident
STORRS — The UConn men’s basketball team walked out of Madison Square Garden around 10 p.m. Saturday night and just kept walking, up 8th Avenue, east on 35th, all the way to the team hotel. Fans gathered and cheered along the way until the Huskies disappeared into the lobby and went about a casual celebration, pulling slices from a bunch of pizza pies.
When you win three games in three days to take the Big East Tournament title, there’s no reason to immediately over-analyze or rush home to squeeze another bleary-eyed second into NCAA Tournament preparation. The Huskies pulled away from Marquette in the championship game and spent the night in Manhattan.
“We elected the stay over and let these guys get some sleep,” coach Dan Hurley said Sunday. “Those getting-in-at-2:30AM’s hurt.”
With a trophy strapped into a seat, the Huskies boarded a bus around 9:30 Sunday morning and reached the Storrs campus around 1 p.m. Five hours later, surrounded by cheerleaders and the pep band, they gathered to watch the NCAA Tournament Selection Show, taking a look at the postseason map drawn up and the routes required for a second consecutive national championship. UConn is the No. 1 overall seed and the No. 1 seed in the East Region, opening play Friday in Brooklyn against Stetson. The second-round opponent would be Florida Atlantic or Northwestern. Fourth-seeded Auburn (which opens against Yale) or fifthseeded San Diego State (which lost last season’s national championship game to the Huskies) are in the bracket and potential Sweet 16 opponents.
The Huskies arrive at this moment in a good place, obviously, with a 31-3 record. But how to compartmentalize what’s been accomplished? How to best prepare for what awaits? This can be a tricky week — though much more so when it is preceded by disappointment.
When UConn lost a Big East semifinal to
Villanova in 2022, Hurley was a menace, edgy, unrelenting in the days that followed. When the Huskies were upset by New Mexico State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, he realized that approach backfired and vowed to do it differently the next time.
Last season, after another semifinal loss in New York, this time to Marquette, Hurley told the team to forget it and move on. That obviously worked. UConn won all six of its NCAA Tournament games by doubledigits and stood on a raised court in Houston as national champions. The program was back. Its coach was relieved of so much pressure.
Now UConn is cruising, all momentum behind them, so much success already, talked about as the clear favorite and the most complete team in college basketball. UConn, already having reached two elusive goals as the Big East regular season and tournament champion, is the story of the national tournament.
It’s different this time around. Perhaps healthier. But still different, something else to adjust to. UConn has never been the No. 1 overall seed. Now it is.
“We definitely feel lighter, the staff and the players do,” Hurley said. “It’s heavy to play at UConn. We don’t have the benefit to fly under the radar. Because if you’re in a program that flies under the radar, eventually you’re going get to a pressure point in a big game. The benefit of playing and coaching at UConn is the expectations are so high so the pressure is always on, so going into NCAA Tournament games, I think we wear the pressure well now. And doing what we did last year and having the season we’ve had this year, there’s a confidence about us. Obviously we’re vulnerable like any other team in the country when we don’t play to our identity, but I think we are more joyful group going into this tournament than we were last year.”
There was brief team meeting after the pizza gathering Saturday, then players went their separate ways, most spending time with family. Pretty much all of Sunday took on a celebratory feel, too. UConn went over some film and some shortcomings were discussed — mostly rebounding and defensive struggles in a semifinal victory over St. John’s — but it was not a frenzied gotta-fix-thisASAP approach that has sometimes surfaced in the Werth Champions Center.
The team starts looking ahead exclusively on Monday and didn’t really punch back in full-time until Tuesday.
“We had a really grueling game on Saturday,” Hurley said. “So we lose the benefit of that extra day of rest, which we had last year, and we obviously looked really fresh. Sometimes losing earlier in the conference tournament does a little bit for you, physically. We’ll mentally prepare and do some light work on the court (Monday) and then really ramp up the intensity as we prepare to play our absolute best game on Friday.”
UConn is an early 27point favorite against Stetson and its odds to win the tournament were 4-to-1 in some sports books Sunday night. No team has repeated as national champion since Florida in 2006-07.
“We are obsessive in the way we approach preparation for our opponents, the respect that we show and just how hard we’re going to play and how hard we’re going to prepare for that first game on Friday,” Hurley said. “There will be an incredible level of desperation with the way we prepare. … Nothing we did this year is going to help us on Friday except the habits, the mindset, the identity. Our accomplishments aren’t going to do much for us.”
Those accomplishments have, though, allowed UConn to breathe a little easier despite playing breathlessly into Saturday night. Last year’s championship was a pressure valve release, basically, an affirmation that what the program does works. You win and there’s no need to panic, no need to arrive back in Storrs at 2:30 a.m. with war paint on faces for brutal film breakdowns.
UConn wins now — 46 of its past 51 games, in fact — because it unleashes a calm, controlled chaos for two hours. The Huskies pride themselves in being efficient, emotionally and physically, with the other 22.
“We’ve got a little bit of confidence and a little bit of momentum coming off the Big East Tournament championship,” Donovan Clingan said. “One thing about this team is everyone’s hungry and everyone wants to keep winning. And so we’re going to give everything we’ve got and prepare the right way for our game on Friday and go one game at a time and we just can’t get too far ahead of ourselves. Keep putting in the work and everything will pay off.”
The team is different this season but the recipe looks the same. Clingan, Tristen Newton, Alex Karaban and Hassan Diarra and some others have been through this before and their experience helps. All the newcomers know is the magic carpet ride, and everyone is so very comfortable at the moment.
“It’s a mature group,” Hurley said. “We understand that we make ourselves very vulnerable if we’re not on point. Dominant rebounding, dominant defense, offense for each other, know the opponent almost as well as we know ourselves and be the hardest playing team on the court.”
Simple approach, really, when boiled down.
“Coming off a loss you definitely feel the anger and just all the pain that you get from that,” Karaban said. “But now that we’ve won this I think our confidence level is way higher. Just coming off a win and competing against some of the best teams in the country this past week, and knowing the momentum that we have from winning three games in a row, and other games previous… really just continuing the hot streak right now.”