The greatest programs: No. 10, Connecticut
Posted: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 7:08 PM
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Greatest hoops programs
Once upon a time, Connecticut hoops had a nice, cozy existence as a regional powerhouse.
Between 1947 and 1967, the Huskies won 17 Yankee Conference regular-season titles and reached the NCAA tournament 11 times. Sure, they only won onethree games in the Big Dance during that time, but that didn’t prevent them from developing a rabid local fan base.
Then two things happened: UConn joined the fledgling Big East in 1979, and it hired Jim Calhoun as its head coach in 1986.
Those two signaled the change from regional powerhouse to No. 10 on the list of greatest college basketball programs.
Yes, that’s a massive jump. But there’s plenty behind it.
UConn is one of college hoops’ elite teams from the last 20 years. It’s won 2 NCAA tournament crowns, reached five Elite Eights and been atop the AP rankings for 24 weeks in that time.
The Huskies have claimed 10 Big East regular-season titles and 28 overall, including their time in the Yankee Conference (only UCLA has had a better run than their 10 consecutive Yankee crowns, while only six have more total titles).
UConn’s 28 NCAA tournament berths are more than Arizona or Cincinnati. It’s also won Big Dance games at a better rate than Syracuse.
The Huskies have a respectable 1,486 victories (better than Georgetown), won at a .6382 clip (better than Louisville).
Keep in mind, most of this has been built up since Calhoun’s arrival. But some attention needs to be paid to the Hugh Greer era.
Greer won nearly 72 percent of his games as UConn’s coach, including most of those Yankee titles. He died of a heart attack during the 1962-63 season, leaving a legacy that Fred Schabel and Dee Rowe tried to continue, but didn’t have the same kind of consistent success.
The main problem? UConn couldn’t compete nationally. That changed under Calhoun.
"The guy who's considered the greatest coach here, Hugh Greer, died on the job of a heart attack," Calhoun told the N.Y. Times in 1990. "The next guy, Fred Shabel, left over the fact that they would not become more of a national team. Burr Carlson, a great player, lasted two years and was asked to leave. Dee Rowe was taking nitroglycerine pills. Dom Perno resigned. Those were my five predecessors. And let me tell you something. Most of that was before the Big East."
Calhoun, who came from Northeastern after winning 248 games in 14 seasons, set about recruiting top-flight talent who could compete for Big East titles – and as a result, national titles.
Once better players started arriving in Storrs, UConn took off. It won 31 games in the ’89-’90 season, the Big East title and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tourney, it’s first in school history.
That tourney also gave the Huskies one of their first classic finishes. Tate George’s last-second buzzer-beater against Clemson was one of that year’s highlights.
Duke’s Christian Laettner beat UConn with a buzzer-beater of his own, preventing keeping the Huskies from the Final Four, but the stage was set for Calhoun’s squad to become one of the nation’s elite programs.
Between the 1993-94 and ’98-99 seasons, UConn won nearly 29 games a season and reached two Elite Eights before finally breaking through in that final year with a balanced, talented team – perhaps Calhoun’s best.
Driven by talkative, pudgy and charismatic point guard Khalid El-Amin, the sharp-shooting of Rip Hamilton and stellar defense of Ricky Moore, UConn rolled to a 32-2 record before finally breaking through for the school’s first Final Four. The basketball-crazed state went nuts, but somehow UConn entered the Final Four as second fiddle to a Duke team that was trying to make its mark as one of the best of all time.
When UConn cut down the nets (and left Duke at 37-2), it gave UConn and Calhoun a long-awaited title and set the expectations even higher for the future.
Five NCAA tournaments later, UConn and Duke met again with title implications. The two programs had established a mini-Big Dance rivalry to this point, with the Devils spoiling UConn’s title hopes in the ‘90s before UConn got its revenge in the title game.
This time around, the Huskies and Devils met in the Final Four. Another classic game had the same result, and UConn went on to claim its second national title.
That’s quite a trip.
In just under 20 years, Calhoun took a school that had never been to a Final Four to winning two titles in five years and building perhaps the nation’s preeminent program (to say nothing of his own Hall of Fame credentials).
Besides the titles, the Huskies attract future NBA players with ease and are a TV staple (though the latter is helped by their proximity to ESPN’s headquarters). A rise like that doesn’t happen often in college hoops.
Only among the great ones.
Next Tuesday, No. 9 on the list of greatest programs.
No. 11, Cincinnati.
No. 12, Utah.
No. 13: Villanova.
No. 14: Illinois.
No. 15: Michigan State.
No. 16: Georgetown.
No. 17: Arkansas.
No. 18: Ohio State.
No. 19: St. John's.
No. 20: UNLV.
No. 21: Texas.
No. 22: Notre Dame.
No. 23: Temple.
No. 24: Oklahoma.
No. 25: N.C. State.
