The University of Connecticut already had a men’s basketball dynasty. How else to describe a program that had won five national titles since 1999, with those victories coming under three different head coaches? If dynasties are hereditary, the Huskies passed theirs from Jim Calhoun to Kevin Ollie to their current boss, Dan Hurley. All that happened on Monday night was a set of affirmations – that Hurley has built something even better than Connecticut had before. And that, for now, the only other team that compares is Dawn Staley’s unbeaten South Carolina in the women’s game.
A 75-60 win over Purdue in the national championship game was a master class in every sense. The Boilermakers had a player who has been the best in men’s college basketball for two years: the running, hulking center Zach Edey. Hurley’s team had a plan, which revealed itself as the night went on: UConn would take their chances and let Edey bang away near the basket, but they would otherwise cut Purdue’s strengths out from under them. The Boilermakers were one of the country’s best three-point-shooting teams all season, making more than 40% of their shots from beyond the arc. On Monday, they went 1-for-7 from that range. Edey’s 37 points didn’t matter when the other Purdue players had 23 combined. UConn’s scoring attack, on the other hand, came in waves, a perfect testament to the depth Hurley has built at his outpost in Storrs, Connecticut.
