College basketball is changing. UConn’s crushing superiority stays the same
TThe University of Connecticut already had a men’s basketball dynasty. How else can you describe a program that has won five national titles since 1999, with those wins 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 Monday night was a series of confirmations – that Hurley has built something even better than before. And that, for now, the only other team that compares is Dawn Staley’s undefeated South Carolina in the women’s game.
A 75-60 victory over Purdue in the national championship game was a masterclass in every sense. The Boilermakers had a player who has been the best in men’s basketball for two years: running, hulking center Zach Edey. Hurley’s team had a plan, which revealed itself as the night wore on: UConn would take their chances and let Edey pop at the basket, but otherwise they would run roughshod over Purdue’s strengths. The Boilermakers were one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country all season, making over 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 combined for 23. 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.
Hurley is hands down the best coach in men’s basketball right now. His profession is at a cross-generational crossroads, as several legends of the game have retired, or will soon, in recent years. (Goodbye, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams and Jay Wright.) Not exactly young at age 51, but with a lot of career left if he wants it, Hurley has established himself as the leader of a new generation of college coaches. He’s done it by winning: two straight national titles put him in rare turmoil, and all 12 opponents in the past two NCAA Tournaments have lost to him by at least 13 points. ‘What could you say? We won. Again, a lot,” Hurley told reporters subsequently. Indeed they did.
But Hurley’s Connecticut stands out for the way they win, as well as the size. He has staged his rise at a moment of change in college sports. Players can now collect money from third parties, and the combination of these payments and the recently relaxed transfer rules means that roster management is nothing like what it was in the days of the Hurleys’ retired colleagues. At the same time, programs that rely too heavily on recruiting high school superstars have fallen short tournament after tournament. John Calipari from Kentucky, the poster child for that method, seems to be going nuts.
In that chaotic environment, UConn is a model of stability. The Huskies are recruiting NBA talent. Several players from last year’s champions have joined the league, with more to come. (Guard Stephon Castle and center Donovan Clingan are on the cusp of becoming wealthy young men.) But the Huskies aren’t a magnet for legions of star recruits leaving college after one season, even if Castle soon will. At the same time, Hurley has worked the transfer portal effectively without blocking the growth of too many players on his own roster. Tristen Newton, the guard who led this team in scoring, played three years at East Carolina before joining UConn and playing a crucial role on back-to-back title teams.
None of this is all that splashy, which is why a program with two titles in two years and six in 26 years will never have the same mainstream cachet as Duke or Kentucky. These programs are perennial stops for future top NBA picks, and they hold a cultural position that will remain elusive to everyone else. The genius of Connecticut is that the Huskies don’t worry about those style points, and a lack of them hasn’t prevented the program from outpacing rivals like Duke and Kentucky in recent championships. (Since the turn of the century, UConn’s number of championships is five, Duke and Kentucky combined four.)
UConn has done its business for so long that there isn’t much reason to expect that to slow down anytime soon. The Huskies have had a messy few years, but their success has been stunningly sustainable considering the transformations that have taken place around them. Not only have they won it all under three coaches, but in what amounts to three different conferences. They won their first three men’s titles in the old edition of the Big East, which had a handful of Eastern religious colleges and a mix of secular schools that have since made football-driven moves into other leagues. UConn briefly did the same and won another American Athletic title. They returned home to a reconstituted Big East after realizing the move made no sense. Two more titles have been released.
All of this is to say: No one knows how long Hurley will be at UConn. No one knows how the team’s roster might change from year to year. But everyone knows that the Huskies have become unique. And after Monday, even fewer people would be able to protest that they have created a multi-generational dynasty.