The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Out to make history
UConn seeking be first repeat national champion in 17 years
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Jim Calhoun, three-time national champion and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer, once noted that you’re judged by the company you keep.
The UConn men’s basketball team has been keeping some pretty good company lately.
Over the past two seasons, the Huskies have rubbed shoulders with some of the great teams in college basketball history: 1984 Georgetown, 1996 Kentucky, 2009 North Carolina. They’ve also etched their name alongside all-time great UConn teams, which can be synonymous with great teams in history, like the 1999 and 2011 Huskies.
There are, of course, a few more teams that UConn would like to match in the history books, 1991-92 Duke and 2006-07 Florida among them. Those are the last two teams to win back-to-back national championships. Dan Hurley’s older brother, Bobby, played on those Duke teams. One of his mentors and recent confidantes, Billy Donovan, coached those Florida squads.
It all starts on Friday at 2:45 p.m., when the No. 1 overall-seeded Huskies take on No. 16 seed Stetson at Barclays Center (2:45 p.m., CBS).
Hurley has talked throughout the season about how this team make history and accomplish something that few other teams have done.
“This road is what we’ve been manifesting and talking about for a long time,” the sixth-year UConn coach said. “You always have to have your sights set on something you want to achieve.”
But those sights aren’t set too far ahead right now.
“He really set the expectation of what this group is capable of doing in the June and July, summer workouts,” Alex Karaban said. “But more recently it’s focused on Stetson. We have to take it day-by-day, we’ve got to go game-by-game and we can’t took too far ahead or else we’re going to get distracted of what we ultimately want to accomplish.”
Both Donovan and Mike Krzyzewski, coach of those Duke back-to-back champions, spoke with CT Insider this past summer about how difficult it was to repeat.
“That second year for us was a really, really, really hard year. Beyond hard,” Donovan recalled. “I don’t think those guys could have ever understood how hard it was going to be.”
Somehow, UConn has made it look easy. Well, easier. The Huskies famously lost six of eight games in January 2023, and finished 13-7 in the Big East. They were 25-8 entering the NCAA Tournament.
This season, UConn has gone months at a time without losing. Just three losses so far in 34 games. The 31 wins are the most by a UConn team since the 1999 team that won 34 games, as well as the program’s first national title, behind Rip Hamilton, Khalid El-Amin & Co. The Huskies’ 18 wins in Big East play are the most in league history. The Huskies’ outright Big East regular-season title this season was also their first since ‘99.
The Huskies finished the season ranked No. 1 in the AP poll and ascended to the top ranking twice this season, for the first time since the 2009 team that went to the Final Four.
UConn’s Big East Tournament title was its eighth all-time, matching Georgetown’s record, and first since 2011, when Kemba Walker led an historic, 11-game win streak through the conference and NCAA tourneys.
In the tournament championship win over Marquette, Donovan Clingan became just the second player ever to notch at least 20 points and 15 rebounds in a Big East title game. The only other: Patrick Ewing, with the 1984 Georgetown team that won it all.
Now, UConn doesn’t have any Patrick Ewings on its roster. There is no Kareem-Abdul Jabbar or Bill Walton, no Grant Hill. Didn’t last year, either. They may not have even had a Rip Hamilton, an Antoine Walker or a Joakim Noah. Jordan Hawkins was an NBA lottery pick last year, Stephon Castle and Clingan could be this year, but they’ve got a long way to go before they’re Hall-of-Famers or even multi-year all-stars.
But when judging great college teams of all time, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how you fare against your competition. And UConn, over the past two seasons, has dominated. The Huskies have gone 27-1 in nonconference play, its lone loss a four-point setback at Kansas this past December. Incredibly, all 27 wins have been by double digits.
UConn won all six of its NCAA Tournament games last season by an average of 20 points per game, fourth-best ever behind 1996 Kentucky, 2016 Villanova and 2009 North Carolina.
Of course, some of UConn’s accomplishments this season have matched a team that the program isn’t necessarily proud of. UConn’s Big East regularseason title, its undefeated home record and other notable accomplishments are the Huskies’ first since the 2006 team. That team, one of the most talented in program history, had too many players thinking about the upcoming NBA Draft and infamously got popped in the Elite Eight by George Mason.
With Castle and Clingan as potential lottery picks, and Alex Karaban and Cam Spencer potential late-first or second-round picks, as well, is that something UConn has to worry about this year? Not likely. In fact, a strong run through the tournament can only enhance the draft stock of those players.
No, these Huskies are chasing history. And they know it. Only seven teams have repeated as national champion —1945-46 Oklahoma A&M, 1948-49 Kentucky, 1955-56 San Francisco, 1961-62 Cincinnati, 1964-65 and 1967-73 UCLA and the aforementioned Duke and Florida squads. Only the latter two have done so since the tournament expanded in 1985.
Ironically, Stetson coach Donnie Jones was one of Donovan’s assistants on those Florida repeat champion teams.
“To do it back-to-back is very hard to do, as you know,” Jones said. “There’s only been a few teams do that in 50 years. The group we had at Florida, to be able to do that, we had a unique brotherhood and closeness. And I look at Dan’s roster and he’s got five guys averaging double figures. His team is good like our team was. We had five guys that averaged double figures back-to-back years, same guys.
So it’s not just one or two guys that carries that team. They have depth and they have a lot of different weapons, and I think with that, it gives them a chance to possibly be able to do that.”
Donovan has been close with Hurley since he recruited some of Hurley’s players at St. Benedict’s Prep. He served as somewhat of a “sounding board” when Hurley was deciding whether to remain at Rhode Island or take the UConn job five years ago. The two spoke over the summer about the difficulties of repeating.
“If Danny gets back to the Final Four again,” Donovan said over the summer, “I’ll bet you he’ll be much, much more prepared for Saturday-Monday than he was this year. He’ll know exactly what they’re walking into.”
Krzyzewski, of course, coached Bobby Hurley on those 1991-92 Duke teams. He remains in occasional contact with Dan.
“Look, it’s a one-game, sixgame thing,” Krzyzewski said back in the summer. “Anything can happen in a game — an injury, a call, the other team is just a little bit better than you. So, to win the whole thing is crazy. And, if you do it twice in a row, that’s nuts ... He’s going to be at Connecticut for a long time, so they’ll have really outstanding teams over and over.”
On Friday at 2:45 p.m., Dan Hurley and the Huskies begin their quest to join Coach K, Billy D and some of the other great teams in history as repeat champions.
You are, after all, judged by the company you keep.