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There are a lot of facets that make this team special -- skill, toughness, IQ, savvy -- but I think the one element that stands out is trust. Trust between the players and the coaches, between the players themselves. We ran an extremely intricate offense that relied on everyone doing 5 or 6...

No, not the chance to win our 6th championship, but the extremely early odds for 2025. Without knowing who's staying, going, anything in the portal, or late recruiting, we are right there in the top 5 among Duke, UNC, Kansas, and Kentucky. That is major, major respect and a sign that we've made it.

1999, the first, will never be surpassed. But this team is such a delight, so unique, so special, that I want this one more than probably any other. Yes, the 2004 team was excellent and Okafor in particular deserved it. Kemba's run was special and a terrific capstone on Calhoun's career. "This...

Last year Diarra was our 9th man, was inserted into our Final Four game against Miami in the first half and promptly turned it over, leading to a fast break dunk. He played 3 minutes with 1 rebound and 1 turnover as his only stats. He didn't play a meaningful minute in Houston after that. The...

I was reading the history of the NCAA Tournament and while I knew they had a pretty constrained number of teams and competed with the NIT, I didn't realize how limited the competition was. It's fair to downgrade championships from before that era. Teams would decline NCAA bids to participate in...

The women gutted out a win over #1 seed USC, setting up a Final Four matchup with Iowa. Once again, both men's and women's teams are in the Final Four with a chance for a third dual championship (for completeness, NC State has a shot at it too). There are remarkable similarities to the last...

These weren't the most impactful plays on Saturday night, coming at the tail end of our 30-0 run with the game already pretty much out of reach, but highlights the brilliance and craftiness of our most experienced players and shows what kind of an advantage they have. The sequence begins at...

It's hard not to look for parallels between last year's run and this year's, and they come readily. In the Sweet 16, we faced a tough, athletic, defensively-minded team who shoot poorly (2023 Arkansas #54 O/#17 D; 2024 SDSU #63 O/#11 D) and won big after leading by 30. In the Elite 8, we faced...

I've heard this a few places in the context of Illinois playing loose and like they have nothing to lose -- which is surely true -- but does that mean the converse is true, that we should feel pressure to win? Of the 7 main guys, most of them have already won -- only Spencer and Castle are...

Consider this my personal game chat as I re-watch the championship game last year and make observations that might be relevant to tomorrow. The first is that Trammel is an itty-bitty guy, but had the assignment on Newton. He drew a BS charge (should have been an and-1) on a Newton drive. I...

I didn't see this otherwise, and I don't particularly care about MSU-MSU, but here we go.

The Committee claims Auburn is the 15th best team. The metrics say otherwise. I trust the people who have money on the line. Auburn is actually the 7th most likely to win the championship, and the only reason they're not higher is because they have to go through us. We are +105 (just shy of...

I don't see much in the chat, so I guess we're doing this here.

This has been going on in a few scattered threads, but merits its own. Who should the #1 seeds be, how should they be paired with the #2 seeds? Coming into this weekend it was generally accepted that there are 3 tiers of these teams: 1) Houston/UConn/Purdue 2) UNC/Tennessee/Arizona 3)...

Starting with our run through the Tournament last year and continuing right through this year, surprising everyone at how good we'd continue to be despite losing 3 guys who've logged NBA minutes. We've lost only 1 game in calendar year 2024. 31-3, including 21-2 in the Big East. Regular season...

I just saw this Tiege Hanley ad on Youtube where Clingan and Spencer were in the locker room comparing imitations of Hurley's game face, with Sanogo making an appearance at the end. I can't find it anywhere, but it's hilarious. Has anyone else seen this? This is one of the best developments...

Edit: Please delete duplicate thread

One game left. We're far and away #1. 2. Creighton 13-6 (@Nova) 3. Marquette 13-6 (@Xavier) 4. Seton Hall 12-7 (vs. DePaul) Seton Hall will win. If Creighton and Marquette both win, Seton Hall is #4. If Creighton and Marquette both lose, Seton Hall is #4. If Creighton loses and Marquette...

We're down to 4 regular season games left. The Big East regular season picture is fairly clear. UConn 14-2, remaining vs. Nova, vs. SH, @Marquette, @PC Marquette 10-4, remaining vs. DePaul, vs. Xavier, vs. PC, @Creighton, vs. UConn, @Xavier Creighton 11-5, remaining @SJ, vs. SH, vs. Marquette...

Yes, I know the cliches. This might be the one case where, yes, we should spend some time looking ahead to Marquette. The schedule does us no favors. We have a late game Wednesday, travel back to Storrs, then at most a day and a half to prepare for the biggest game of the season so far Saturday...

I was thinking about this last night -- I feel like in sports we often see cases where a team comes on unexpectedly strong and wins a championship one year, comes back next year and dominates the regular season and looks poised to repeat, but then falls short. Obviously I have this year's team...

Has anybody else noticed Spencer and Newton doing this? After a tough made basket, they'll make a point to grab the ball out of the net and toss it to the ref. It's a subtle thing, but buys us a few seconds to get back on D and shuts down any kind of a counter-break. Heady.

A year ago today we were 5-6 in conference, 16-6 overall, having lost 6 of 8, barely hanging onto a top 25 ranking. We couldn't win a close game, Andre Jackson was a headcase, and we were wondering if we were going to squander the best start to a season in over a decade and flame out in the...

This seems like a lot for a Big East road game, but what do I know. I love Over 141.5 in this game. We are both better offensive teams than defensive teams, Richmond is probably going to go off again, and the bad guys just played a 93-87 game.

There's a negative connotation to the portal in this new era, about guys changing schools at the drop of a hat, going somewhere for a year before moving on, "mercenaries." But after seeing Cam Spencer last night, and really over the entire last month, it's hard not to feel like this guy...

Opening line on Draftkings is out already. No moneyline yet, but would be +110-120 or so. This implies that we'd be a slight favorite on a neutral court, which feels about right and is what I expected. The total is 148.5. My gut feeling is to take the Over. I wouldn't be surprised to see this...

I'm visiting my wife's family in Syracuse today. Do I wear my UConn 2023 National Champions shirt?

Anyone remember in preseason when someone said that Clingan was basically no better than a warm body, super raw, and that we were only recruiting him as a favor and because it would look bad if we ignored a Top 50 in-state kid? What happened to that guy?

I can't imagine anything better for the mojo than this. He's always hated the program. Let's shove it up his ___. Most punchable face in the sport.

Miami has lost only 2 games in the last two months, but they may be instructive towards answering the question of "when Miami loses, why?" Notably, in both losses, to FSU and Duke, they gave up 85 points. If Miami is losing, it's probably because of their defense. The first is Florida State...

For all you degenerates out there, how are you handling reporting your sports betting winnings and losses? From what I understand, you are not supposed to just report your net winnings as income, but instead are supposed to report every single payout as income and every single wager/loss as a...

Not only in terms of our performance now versus 2 months ago, but for the program as a whole under Hurley. Two years ago we had a 13-6 regular season and earned a #7 seed. Last year we had a 22-8 regular season and earned a #5 seed. This year we had a 24-7 regular season and are in line for no...

Expanding on the KenPom thread: with only 3 regular season games left followed by the BET -- and our place in the standings fairly secure -- we can start making some reasonable projections about seeding based on the remaining outcomes. This is predicated on the fact that our win vs. Providence...

Heading into last week there was a hope and expectation that this truly was a special team, a Dream Season-like renaissance under Hurley that would catapult us back to permanent national relevance. After Xavier I posed the question of whether this was: A) a blip, we'd snap back to dominance and...

Draftkings is showing UConn -5 and moneyline of -210/+180. Not sure I envision us winning a close game here. This feels like one of those games where we win comfortably or lose in excruciating fashion.