HOUSTON — Of course, they bleed blue. They’re Blue Bloods.
But there are no silly or make-believe labels that should matter to UConn’s vast legion of basketball fans, or to the Huskies’ home state at this delirious moment. The title that matters is the one the men’s basketball team, Dan Hurley’s Huskies, earned Monday night.
The Huskies completed a roll through the NCAA Tournament that has few comparisons, no numerical equals in the long history of March Madness, beating San Diego State 76-59, to take home the program’s fifth NCAA trophy before 72,423 at NRG Stadium.
“We knew we were the best team in the tournament,” Hurley told the crowd. “We just had to play to our level. We had four national championships coming in, now we’ve got our own. … Now we’ve got our own.”
Disneyland, Disney World and Pixar, putting all their imaginative minds together, couldn’t have come up with a fairy tale like the one that has unfolded at UConn over these last three decades, Geno Auriemma said when he got to Houston. Both the men’s and women’s basketball programs, with their total of 16 championships, and 16-1 record in championship games, have been the most successful on their sides of the basketball world over that long span.
A year and a half ago Hurley, who can be superstitious and idiosyncratic, took the trophies out of his office. The Werth Center had come to be a “museum of others’ accomplishments,” he said.
“We propped up in recruiting those four championships in front of these kids,” Hurley said. “And we had nothing to do with that. We removed them about 18 months ago when we started feeling like we put something together that could make a run at a fifth. We didn’t want any trophies in there until we got our own. And when you’re in a place like that, it feels a little bit empty until you feel like you can join the club. I feel like we’ve held up our end of the bargain.”
If the women’s long era of excellence was paused with a rare defeat in the Sweet 16 this month, the men’s program, completing its steady resurgence under Hurley, is at the dawn of another such era.
Hurley’s Huskies owned this March Madness, winning every game by double digits. That in itself had never happened before in a tournament first played in 1939.
And the great thing about any championship, however it is won, is that it renders all that came before it meaningless, the six losses in January, the first-round tournament exits the last two years, the dismal seasons that followed Kevin Ollie’s 2014 championship, all can be forgotten and forgiven now. UConn is back on top, and when it is referred to as a “blue blood” in the sport, no one can scoff. “How could we not be?” said Rudy Gay, one of the past Husky great celebrating in the locker room. “I guess we needed the fifth to prove it.”
When Storrs is called “The Basketball Capital of the World,” it’s not just a marketing pitch.
The championship game played out like the previous five games. Little drama, little suspense, lots of dominance and a lot of Adama Sanogo, who had 16 points and 10 rebounds.
The Aztecs hit their first three shots, a couple of 3s, despite UConn’s best defensive efforts. They led 6-2, and 10-6. But then the Huskies’ relentless defense took control, smothering their opponent.
San Diego State missed 15 of its next 16 shots, went a ridiculous 11 minutes without a field goal, and UConn slowly took the lead and kept adding to it. Nahiem Alleyne’s pull-up completed a 16-2 run, giving the Huskies a 22-12 lead. Tristen Newton scored seven points in a row by himself, and Joey Calcaterra’s pull-up 3 made it 36-20 with 3:19 left in the half.
Everybody was involved, the way it was throughout the NCAA Tournament, and the collective goal was in clear view as the half ended.
The Aztecs kept bulldogging and crept with five points with a little over five minutes left, but the Huskies (31-8) steadied, tightened the defensive clamps one last time and ran off nine points in a row. Then the celebration began, likely to continue with a parade back home this weekend. And Connecticut, with so much practice, does parades much the way it does Final Fours.
Sanogo, named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four, completed six terrific games . He wanted everyone to get a day off in his native Mali if UConn won, and he delivered his end, scoring 17 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. Newton, the transfer from East Carolina, scored 19, Jordan Hawkins 16.
Hurley was hired away from Rhode Island five years ago after two straight losing seasons, with a mandate to resurrect the program Jim Calhoun built into a durable national power, and restore UConn to what its fans believe is only its rightful place. The process was long and sometimes painful, sometimes excruciating, as it was after a first-round loss to New Mexico State a year ago.
But in the end, Hurley assembled the team to do it, deep and diverse in its skill sets. He delivered all he promised, and all UConn fans had come to expect. Blue bloods, after all, expect to look down on the rest.
Once again, UConn can. The Huskies have returned to royalty.
“Every single day you’re in that gym, you see the banners hanging,” Andre Jackson Jr. said. “It’s big shoes to fill. So if you have your own, you can go in there and feel like you’ve left something behind, it feels great. To bring another one to UConn, Connecticut, it’s insane.”
