The Improbability of UConn

[G0UCONN]

Alot of truth here.

Jim Calhoun is THE best.

 

[uconnfan68]

It's doable.

 

[WrenchFan69]

All of these reasons are very valid but were summarily defeated by the greatness of Jim Calhoun. Best college basketball coach ever.

 

[storrsroars]

Russillo really needs a backdrop. Hard to take a guy seriously when he's filming from his bedroom with the actual bed behind him.

 

[bendm]

he just craps on CT the whole time but i'd rather live and go to school in CT than Kansas.

 

[ctchamps]

Instead of waiting in the lounge outside the Civic Center Bar his dad should have taken him to the Dairy Bar. Then this Johnnies fan would understand everything.

 

[HCCForever]

Russillo really needs a backdrop. Hard to take a guy seriously when he's filming from his bedroom with the actual bed behind him.

Are you sure that's his room. He has wandered into other people's homes in the past.

 

[Mots010]

I could listen to a 1979-1989 Big East non Uconn fan wax poetic about their glory days, and how Uconn passed them by...all day long.

 

[Waquoit]

It was funny hearing him talk about going to the Civic Center for last four years of the Perno era rooting for the other team knowing that UConn would never win. He cites the fact that Perno only won 19 league games in the last four years he was there. How the hell did he last for 4 years? Or 3? Or 2?

 

[my2cents]

From the 89-90 team thru most of the 90's we had great teams and great players, before we broke thru in 99. The amount of players we put in the NBA had way more effect on recruiting than Storrs, which was expanding and improving too.

 

[ConnEd]

Football (his Vandy comparison) is terrible. For one, you need a lot of really good players to compete in a sport (college football) where there are maybe 20-30 programs with a real shot at a title in any given year. Second, you can succeed in basketball with 2 really good players and 4-6 good players and/or role players. So, winning once, or having a 2-3 year run, for any program is not so inconceivable (e.g. Butler). But once you do that, your coach is going to get offers for more money or more prestigious programs. So, it's really hard to continue the success and become a consistent power in the sport.

The amazing part for UConn is that JC stayed at UConn and produced 20+ years of consistent success. Unlike Russillo, who seems to think every kid wants to go to school in a destination location (why isn't Pepperdine a bball power? Or Tulane? Or USC?), there are enough guys like Ray Allen that don't want the added off-campus distractions while they try to learn their craft. And JC was consistently able to find those guys and get them to Storrs. He was able to build on his initial success which made the job a little easier over time. Another credit to JC.

He had a similar situation at Northeastern. Yes, it's in Boston. But I lived in the adjacent Boston suburbs for 20+ years, and I still can't tell you what's part of the campus and what isn't. The school itself plus it's conference could not have been draws. But he had some success there. And, what happened after JC left? At UConn, he built a culture of winning that, thankfully, has survived a challenging decade of transition.

 

[Palatine]

I always thought UConn could build a program that competed with the best schools in the country. And I thought it pre-Calhoun.

Here's why. First basketball always mattered in Connecticut. It was born 10 minutes north of Enfield. Baseball in the summer and basketball in the winter. That was what kids cared about. And the summers were short. Basketball, we played it and watched it.

Connecticut was growing then. Fortune 500 companies were leaving NYC and coming into the state with their HQs. We were an economic power.

UConn beat mighty Bill Bradley and consistently played in the post season through the 60s and 70s. There were flashes of what we could be.

North Carolina was this big power because Frank McGuire built an power school by recruiting New York and UConn was a heck of lot closer to New York than Carolina. Providence and Syracuse started getting those guys and they carried northeastern basketball. They were no more probable than us. All these powers had Connecticut kids on their rosters Johnny Egan, Marvin Barnes, Tom Roy, Sly Williams, Soup Campbell and John Williamson, Pinone and Jensen. It goes on, it's a really long list.

As soon as they opened the Civic Center, they sold it out 1974. I think the fans knew before the school, UConn could be great. That was a decade before Calhoun.

Or maybe I was just a kid who saw Toby and the Huskies in 1962 and didn't know any better. But I think it a vision. Five. Amazing. Five. Improbable. Five. The ingredients were there for a long time before they were realized.

 

[homunculus]

Yeah this sounded like a bunch of grudging backhanded compliments. Basically “They sure have done it but I don’t know how anyone accomplished anything in the worthless dumps that are Storrs, Hartford and Connecticut.”

 

[ninety-nine]

Five is amazing, and it's only the beginning.

 

[Dogdeacon]

Football (his Vandy comparison) is terrible. For one, you need a lot of really good players to compete in a sport (college football) where there are maybe 20-30 programs with a real shot at a title in any given year. Second, you can succeed in basketball with 2 really good players and 4-6 good players and/or role players. So, winning once, or having a 2-3 year run, for any program is not so inconceivable (e.g. Butler). But once you do that, your coach is going to get offers for more money or more prestigious programs. So, it's really hard to continue the success and become a consistent power in the sport.

The amazing part for UConn is that JC stayed at UConn and produced 20+ years of consistent success. Unlike Russillo, who seems to think every kid wants to go to school in a destination location (why isn't Pepperdine a bball power? Or Tulane? Or USC?), there are enough guys like Ray Allen that don't want the added off-campus distractions while they try to learn their craft. And JC was consistently able to find those guys and get them to Storrs. He was able to build on his initial success which made the job a little easier over time. Another credit to JC.

He had a similar situation at Northeastern. Yes, it's in Boston. But I lived in the adjacent Boston suburbs for 20+ years, and I still can't tell you what's part of the campus and what isn't. The school itself plus it's conference could not have been draws. But he had some success there. And, what happened after JC left? At UConn, he built a culture of winning that, thankfully, has survived a challenging decade of transition.

The improbability is further defined by the fact that there is no analogy. As you say football doesn't work, I was thinking Quinnipiac in hockey going from close to a commuter school to hockey powerhouse, but the attention on hockey is so much less and it is a northern sport so some degree of natural advantage. Actually the only apt analog is what the women's team has done.

We can't discount the effect that Geno and the women's program has on the UConn brand and men's basketball. To have unquestionably the best EVER women's college basketball program provides ballast, legitimacy, peers and winning experiences that cannot be over-stated.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

It was funny hearing him talk about going to the Civic Center for last four years of the Perno era rooting for the other team knowing that UConn would never win. He cites the fact that Perno only won 19 league games in the last four years he was there. How the hell did he last for 4 years? Or 3? Or 2?

This angered me beyond description. What I find most amazing is that at the time a large portion of the fanbase would have preferred dropping down a level to replacing Perno and there were always excuses as to why we could never be competitive with the better teams in the BE.

It took Toner three years and Northeastern embarrassing us before he was given approval on firing Perno and it took well over a year of massaging egos to get them to approve JC as a candidate. If Toner had his way, HC would have taken over two years earlier.

 

[storrsroars]

Are you sure that's his room. He has wandered into other people's homes in the past.

It's a bad look regardless.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

He should talk to Ray Allen about it.

Storrs is the perfect place to go to be focused and undistracted.

 

[HooperScooper]

Russillo really needs a backdrop. Hard to take a guy seriously when he's filming from his bedroom with the actual bed behind him.

Does he still work for ESPN? I remember him on sports radio in Boston. That was like 20 years ago.

 

[ctchamps]

It was a real poor job of trying to relate how it was impossible to think UConn could be at this level given where it was at the beginning of the BE history.

Storrs is what it is and it's neither a positive or a negative in recruiting.

Focusing on it adds no value to the Herculean job JC did in finding the right combination of players and dedicating himself to bringing those players up to a level that resulted in achieving blue blood status. There were players who liked the setting of the campus and stated it. But it's good time filler.

 

[Dogdeacon]

This angered me beyond description. What I find most amazing is that at the time a large portion of the fanbase would have preferred dropping down a level to replacing Perno and there were always excuses as to why we could never be competitive with the better teams in the BE.

It took Toner three years and Northeastern embarrassing us before he was given approval on firing Perno and it took well over a year of massaging egos to get them to approve JC as a candidate. If Toner had his way, HC would have taken over two years earlier.

True. Yet more precisely it took allowing the star player (the great Earl Kelley) to do whatever he wanted to the extreme of Earl kidnapping a fellow student in search of either drugs or money, getting kicked off campus yet still somehow remaining on the basketball team until he failed out of school only b/c Earl assumed he was bulletproof (due to skating on the aforementioned offenses) so he stopped making even the cursory effort at being a student. That fiasco truly enabled Toner to fire Perno.

 

[Hogoff]

Russillo really needs a backdrop. Hard to take a guy seriously when he's filming from his bedroom with the actual bed behind him.

At least the bed is made.

 

[Mazhude]

Shout out to Earl Kelley, who I think would have actually buckled down under Calhoun.

 

[BuffaloHusky]

I heard the podcast a few days ago and couldn't agree more with him. I know in my case, when other fans ask me why I care about UConn so much the answer is always the same... "when I was a kid (those same years he is alluding to) the thought of one national championship was incomprehensible." Given all that, I wouldn't trade my fandom with any other team college or pro.

 

[Buzzyboy]

I always thought UConn could build a program that competed with the best schools in the country. And I thought it pre-Calhoun.

Here's why. First basketball always mattered in Connecticut. It was born 10 minutes north of Enfield. Baseball in the summer and basketball in the winter. That was what kids cared about. And the summers were short. Basketball, we played it and watched it.

Connecticut was growing then. Fortune 500 companies were leaving NYC and coming into the state with their HQs. We were an economic power.

UConn beat mighty Bill Bradley and consistently played in the post season through the 60s and 70s. There were flashes of what we could be.

North Carolina was this big power because Frank McGuire built an power school by recruiting New York and UConn was a heck of lot closer to New York than Carolina. Providence and Syracuse started getting those guys and they carried northeastern basketball. They were no more probable than us. All these powers had Connecticut kids on their rosters Johnny Egan, Marvin Barnes, Tom Roy, Sly Williams, Soup Campbell and John Williamson, Pinone and Jensen. It goes on, it's a really long list.

As soon as they opened the Civic Center, they sold it out 1974. I think the fans knew before the school, UConn could be great. That was a decade before Calhoun.

Or maybe I was just a kid who saw Toby and the Huskies in 1962 and didn't know any better. But I think it a vision. Five. Amazing. Five. Improbable. Five. The ingredients were there for a long time before they were realized.

You are soooooo right ... I had almost forgotten about how many times I listened to UConn basketball on WTIC in the late 50's and 60's .... Wes and Toby and many others .... UConn was a really viable regional team and an integral part of the Yankee Conference, which was a pretty solid conference in that era .... As I said, you regurgitated some long forgotten memories and I thank you for that ...