Absolutely, William & Mary is an excellent academic school with no-brand name, i.e. football and basketball, public university (though UConn has tangled with them in soccer a lot). Binghamton, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara (another good soccer program), UC Irvine are all public universities not playing premier college sports and all in the US News top 50.
That said, none of those schools have to compete with the heavy number of elite privates in the Northeast. For years, UConn has been a safety school for CT students and that mentality was reflected in the campus and with state funding. Starting with the NIT championship in 1988 that began to change. Yet, even in the early 90’s when I graduated from HS, people still thought I was insane for picking UConn over Syracuse (to be fair, could not afford Syracuse, which is why I did not go). UConn won its basketball title in 1995 (women), which generated a lot of attention and support in Hartford allowing for UConn 2000 to be passed. That $1 billion project transformed the campus from a 1950’s Post WWII expanse of building to a legitimate, national research university. UConn 21st Century added another $1.2 billion to reconstruction and then add the 3 titles in men’s basketball and 7 more in women’s hoops and that is where UConn is today.
Without it, I do not know if Hartford would have ever supported UConn 2000 and the subsequent re-construction of the school. Without UConn 2000, UConn would very much look like where UMass is today (not that UMass is a bad school).
