The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Are Spartans a UConn rival? And if not, who is?
PORTLAND, Ore. — Most UConn fans will tell you it doesn’t compare to playing Duke or Kentucky.
And it’s certainly not like playing Syracuse or Georgetown, or even Villanova or Louisville or many of the old Big East foes.
No, Michigan State isn’t a rival of the Huskies in the traditional sense. Still, it’s impossible to deny that UConn has played the Spartans in some of its biggest games over the past decade. The latest installment came in the wee hours of Friday night/Saturday morning, when the Huskies and Spartans faced off in the semifinals of the Victory Bracket at the PK80 Invitational.
There was the 2009 Final Four, a virtual home game for Michigan State at Detroit’s Ford Field that the Spartans won, 82-73. Some feel that if Jerome Dyson had been healthy for that game, the Huskies would have been playing for the national title two nights later against North Carolina.
There was the Maui Invitational semifinals in 2010, where Kemba Walker’s legend started to grow with a 30-point performance in the Huskies’ 70-67 win. The following night, UConn topped Kentucky to win the tourney.
Two years later, in Kevin Ollie’s very first game as a head coach at any level, the unranked Huskies upset No. 14 Michigan State 66-62 at the Armed Force Classic in Germany. The entire
team surrounded their head coach in a show of unity during Ollie’s postgame TV interview, a practice they’d often continue over the next couple of seasons.
And, of course, there was UConn’s 60-54 win over the Spartans in the 2014 Elite Eight at Madison Square Garden that sent the Huskies to the Final Four in Dallas, where they’d win their fourth national title.
Entering Friday night’s game, the programs had met just six times, with UConn owning a 4-2 edge. Ollie was 2-0 against Tom Izzo, a Hall of Famer.
After Thursday night’s first-round win over Oregon, Ollie was asked if he views Michigan State as a little more special of an opponent than others.
“No, I don’t worry about that,” he said. “I just think Tom Izzo is a wonderful coach. He’s won so many games. He’s got a great program, he leads.”
A bit of Twitter crowdsourcing on Friday afternoon revealed that most Husky fans don’t view Michigan State as a rival. A nice matchup every few years in some kind of tournament play, sure. But not a rival. They simply don’t play often enough.
Still, a good deal of those fans believe that Kentucky and/or Duke are rivals. The Huskies have played Kentucky just five times (UConn is 4-1), with no future games on the horizon. Of course, the stakes are usually very high: UConn beat UK in the 2014 national championship game, as well as the 2011 Final Four (and the aforementioned Maui finals in 2010).
UConn and Duke have played 10 times, but only once in the past nine years. Again, the stakes have usually been high, including possibly the biggest game in Husky history — the 77-74, national title game victory in 1999. There was also, of course, UConn’s 79-78 win over the Blue Devils in the 2004 Final Four, as well as a game involving a certain Christian Laettner that Husky fans would just as soon forget.
The majority of UConn fans seem to feel Syracuse is the school’s biggest rival. Even though Syracuse fans largely consider Georgetown their biggest rival. And even though the teams no longer play in the same conference.
Granted, UConn and Syracuse have rekindled their rivalry in recent years. They’ll play for the third time in as many years on Dec. 5 as part of the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden, and could very well play again next year in the 2K Classic at the Garden.
Still, as Orange coach Jim Boeheim pointed out after the teams met for the final time as Big East rivals in February, 2013, Syracuse’s biggest rival used to be St. Bonaventure. That ended when the Orange joined the Big East.
“Your biggest rivals are going to be teams in your league,” Boeheim noted that night after UConn’s emotional, 66-58 win at the XL Center.
With that in mind, UConn’s biggest rival now should be Cincinnati. The Bearcats are one of the holdovers from the Big East now in the American, and have been perhaps the best overall team in the league since its inception in 2013-14. The Huskies and Bearcats have had some tight battles in recent years, though they haven’t always been pretty. Mick Cronin plays the role of antagonist pretty well.
Some fans on Twitter grudgingly admitted that Cincy is UConn’s new rival. But it hardly has the sizzle of the old Big East rivalries. When the Big East was still churning along 10 years ago, a game against the Bearcats rated far lower than a bout with Syracuse, Georgetown, Villanova, Pitt or Louisville, and possibly even Providence or Seton Hall.
It’s possible, as several fans on Twitter pointed out, that perhaps UConn simply doesn’t have a rival right now.