Nova is UConn’s biggest rival | Page 4 | The Boneyard

Nova is UConn’s biggest rival

Zissou said:
Great win Huskies! I hate it!

But this is what it’s all about. High energy. Sold out. 2 ranked teams late in the season. Top 10 team beaten on the road.
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It felt like big east basketball didn’t it?
 
Zissou said:
Would you have rather had Pitt at XL last night?

We had our time with Pitt, but that’s now in the past. Pitt turned its back on the Big East and jumped off a cliff for money. No exposure to the NY-Philly-DC corridor. No effective metro recruiting. All of the back stabbers that orchestrated the treason have turned over and they left a mountain of karma for their successors. No national titles for Pitt, and only one Final Four in their entire Big East history, with their 2009 team. No, wait, check that. Scottie Reynolds scored at the buzzer to crush their hearts and send them home from the Elite Eight. No Final Fours for Pitt. And now Pitt sucks. Our rivalry is as dead as their commitment to the Big East.

Nova did have some great rivalries from the old Big East. The Pitt rivalry doesn’t survive to the present. They are not worthy in so many ways.

UConn and Nova are each other’s “main rivals” now. That doesn’t mean “hated rivals” or “bitter rivals”. There is a high level of mutual respect. Competition sometimes brews hatred, but not always. I will definitely pull for UConn in March unless they meet Nova.

WVU, BC, Pitt… it’s ok to let them just fade away. They never won a national championship and their blip of Big East competitiveness is just that.
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You do you

Syracuse and PC will always be ahead of Nova for me and perhaps going forward Nova will replace Pitt, but the history, great games and the physical nature of them still are head and shoulders above any Nova rivalry to me. Jay has great teams, but honestly I don’t have amy animosity towards Nova its a bunch of jump shooters - it’s beautiful basketball, but I’m old and do miss the OBE i have zero hate for Nova, but a lot of distaste for Pitt because of their guys and style of play - Troutman, Blair, Krauser, Taft, etc. - from that era.

I’m not sure you understand the UConn/Pitt games in the late 90’s and 00’s.

If you want to say Nova is UConn’s main rival have at it, but why does it matter so much to you?
 
2 quality programs:
NCAA titles 4 > 3
BE championships 7 > 5 (more for UConn despite years stuck in AAC).

Don't even dislike Nova, and appreciate Jay Wright, similar to Tyler Olander they've won more titles than Boeheim, and the Wildcats aren't scummy St Johns.
 
How is Pee Cee a rivalry? shouldn't there some sort of a minimum tournament wins in order to be rivals? They’re decent this year but rivals, nope.
Syracuse sure. But lately they’re as polluted as Lake Onondaga and not much fun to hate anymore. Almost feel as bad for them as I do for Pee Cee in March.
Nova i could dislike if they continue their winning ways at our expense but hard to “hate” classy jay. Now if he dropped a deuce on center court Gampel we’d speed things up.
 
bendm said:
for sure we are now.

always felt like we were the third wheel in the cuse v gtown thing based on their pre 1990s history, even though we were better than both programs from the mid 1990s to mid 2010s. this perception was confirmed during espn's atrocious "requiem for the big east" where calhoun had maybe 3 lines.
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And don't forget the greatest BE Tournament run was Syracuse's four games in four nights!

I felt certain five games in five nights might be considered more difficult, especially considering the strength of the league that year (11 teams in the NCAA tournament), but NOOOOOOO, it was the four games run that got featured.
 
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uc1990 said:
The one win that I actually remember that you had that made me hate Villanova was Kittles coming in when we were ranked #1 in the country (Ithink for the first time?) the rest are forgettable.
You guys are catching up with 5 big East championships now to our 7 and 3 national championships to our 4. So you have to be happy that we don’t totally dominate you in these categories like we used to. Makes it more of a rivalry.
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Don't go overboard with this respect stuff. UConn's 7 Big East Championships were against the Old Big East. A loaded league compared to 2013 to 2020.
 
Hard to see how Nova doesn’t easily become our biggest rival after a few more years of BE basketball.

Have to think though that it won’t get too bitter due to 1) (as everyone has said) it’s tough to not have a lot of respect for Wright and how he runs the program and 2) Nova is the only other national brand in the conference. It is pretty undeniably better for both programs if the other can maintain a top level program, for the credibility of the league. A lot of us are itching for Georgetown to regain it’s status but that seems a very long way from happening. The rest of the conference has some solid programs but nothing close to an absolute top level program this century.
 
BGesus4 said:
Hard to see how Nova doesn’t easily become our biggest rival after a few more years of BE basketball.

Have to think though that it won’t get too bitter due to 1) (as everyone has said) it’s tough to not have a lot of respect for Wright and how he runs the program and 2) Nova is the only other national brand in the conference. It is pretty undeniably better for both programs if the other can maintain a top level program, for the credibility of the league. A lot of us are itching for Georgetown to regain it’s status but that seems a very long way from happening. The rest of the conference has some solid programs but nothing close to an absolute top level program this century.
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Agreed. As long as nothing happens that's outside the bounds of good sportsmanship between these two programs, you have to think UConn and Villanova are the favorites for setting the Big East basketball rivalry standard over the next few years, and in a way that won't be cynical or frustrated. Both programs have won multiple NCs in the recent past and are considered basketball blue bloods at this point, so the fanbases are playing with house money as they enjoy their programs' legacies. It benefits both, and the Big East overall, if they can achieve competitive parity on the court and stay near the top of the league year in and year out.

There may be other in-conference rivals specific to each school (say, Seton Hall for VU and Providence for UConn) that have a little different feel and intensity because of other dynamics like extreme geographic closeness and one program having outshone the other on the national stage, but a top-shelf UConn-Villanova rivalry seems like a very strong bet, and a good thing for all of us fans. (Plus, their women's program ended our women's program's incredible conference winning streak, so you can add that to the bonfire as well.)
 
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UChusky916 said:
Got the powerball numbers for tomorrow?! Good call my man, you deserve more than a like for that premonition.
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I was looking for this post for 3 hours after the game !! Called a classic !! Well done
AntG168 said:
They will be after tonight. I think this game will be a classic
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