OkaForPrez
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There has been a running series of threads on the Reddit CBB forum featuring the best performance of every team from a particular state. Here is Connecticut’s:
Suggest your search the poster for their other threads.
Bonus Fun Facts for Connecticut
-The state of Connecticut’s college basketball history is basically UConn, and then everyone else. UConn has won 59 tournament games, made five final fours, and won four championships. The other six D1 Connecticut teams have won just one tournament game between them.
-Since the majority of their tournament success has occurred in the 1990s or later, I think most people here are probably already pretty familiar with much of UConn’s tournament history, but I’ll try to give them their due anyway.
-If you, like me, were born between April 5, 1993 and March 29, 1999, UConn has won more men’s championships in your lifetime than any other school. (For people born between the 1991 & 1993 champ games, the 1999 & 2004 champ games, or the 2005 & 2011 champ games, UConn is tied with some combination of Duke, UNC, Florida, & Villanova for the most number of championships in your lifetime.)
-UConn won its first championship, in 1999, despite being 9.5 point underdogs vs. Duke. This remains the largest point spread upset in men’s NCG history.
-The UConn women have won eleven championships, tied with the UCLA men for the most of any NCAA basketball team. What I think is really cool, though, is that they both one the championship in 1995 - for UCLA, it was their eleventh (and most recent), while for UConn, it was their first (and longest ago).
-Since 2007, the only non-Top 2 seed to win the tournament was UConn, and they did it twice: 2011, as a 3 seed and 2014, as a 7 seed. They’re still the only 7 seed to win the tournament - only 1985 Villanova was a lower seed (8).
-Some of the NBA talents to play at UConn include Ray Allen, Kemba Walker, Rudy Gay, Andre Drummond, Richard Hamilton, Jeremy Lamb, Cliff Robinson, and Caron Butler.
-Speaking of Walker, it wouldn’t be a true Connecticut post without mentioning “Cardiac Kemba” leading UConn to five wins in five days at Madison Square Garden to win the Big East tournament (right before he’d lead them to a national championship.) Also, Jim Calhoun.
-UConn has ended some notable cinderella/underdog runs - like Gonzaga’s 1999 Elite Eight campaign, Alabama’s only Elite Eight appearance (in 2004), Butler’s Haywardless return to the title game in 2011, and Kentucky’s run to the title game in 2014. Those last three were all eight seeds - giving them the strange distinction of having beaten 37.5% of all eight seeds to reach the Elite Eight, including the three most recent ones.
-While they certainly have had a large majority of their success within the last 25 years, UConn wasn’t exactly a complete joke of a program prior to that, either. Before their first championship in 1999, they had already made four Elite Eights, ten Sweet Sixteens, and twenty tournaments overall.
-I have to mention THIS GAME, the single craziest basketball game I ever remember watching.
-The only other Connecticut school to win a D1 game is Yale. They qualified for the 1949 eight-team tournament, but lost both their main game and consolation game. After first round losses in 1957 and 1962, they wouldn’t reach the tournament again until 2016, when they upset Baylor, perhaps due to out-rebounding them.
-Yale’s losses in 1957 and 1962 came to UNC and Wake Forest, respectively, and their second round loss in 2016 came to Duke, meaning they have already lost to ¾ of the Tobacco Road teams despite only having appeared in five tournaments.
-Consistent with the dominance of the Ivy League in the early years of college sports, Yale is considered a 4x champion by Premo-Porretta (1896, 1897, 1899, 1900), and a 2x champion by Helms (1901, 1903). One of their wins in that 1896 season came against the “Dr. Savage Physical Institute”. (Bring back DSPI basketball!)
-Chris Dudley played for the Bulldogs in college and went on to have a long NBA career. He also ran for Oregon governor but lost. Miye Oni, who was drafted out of Yale in 2019, is currently a bench player for the Utah Jazz.
-Central Connecticut State (CCSU) is known as the Blue Devils. They have combined with the only other D1 team that goes by Blue Devils for 44 tournament appearances, 105 wins, 28 sweet sixteens, 16 final fours, and 5 championships.
-During their time in D1, CCSU makes the NCAA tournament if and only if they were the conference’s regular season champions. The three times that they were, they also won their conference tournament, but they’ve never been able to win it otherwise. This might seem like the logical thing to happen, but conference tournaments tend to be very chaotic so it's actually pretty surprising they never stumbled as the 1 seed or went on an underdog run as the non-1 seed. In fact, the 1 seed in the NEC has won the tournament just twice in the past nine years.
-Corsley Edwards, who helped CCSU to their first two tournament appearances, was chosen in the 2nd round of the NBA Draft. Sadly, he only played briefly in the NBA, but he did have a lengthy international career.
-The coach for CCSU during all three of their tournament appearances was named “Howie Dickenman”. Bet he was the target of a lot of jokes in middle school.
-Fairfield was blown out in their first two appearances by Illinois and Indiana, but made things interesting in 1997 against UNC despite being a 16 seed. They led by seven at the half, and were leading as late as 14:32 in the second half. They were within a possession of the Tar Heels with 3:33 to go, but UNC finished strong and avoided the upset.
-In 2005, Fairfield power forward and future NBAer Deng Gai led the nation in blocked shots/game, with 5.5. He also remains in the top ten all-time blocks leaders in NCAA D1 basketball, with 442.
-Assuming they follow through with their plans to leave Division I, Hartford will become the most recent team to appear in the D1 tournament not still part of Division I. That distinction is currently held by Cal State-Los Angeles, who appeared in 1974.
Suggest your search the poster for their other threads.
Bonus Fun Facts for Connecticut
-The state of Connecticut’s college basketball history is basically UConn, and then everyone else. UConn has won 59 tournament games, made five final fours, and won four championships. The other six D1 Connecticut teams have won just one tournament game between them.
-Since the majority of their tournament success has occurred in the 1990s or later, I think most people here are probably already pretty familiar with much of UConn’s tournament history, but I’ll try to give them their due anyway.
-If you, like me, were born between April 5, 1993 and March 29, 1999, UConn has won more men’s championships in your lifetime than any other school. (For people born between the 1991 & 1993 champ games, the 1999 & 2004 champ games, or the 2005 & 2011 champ games, UConn is tied with some combination of Duke, UNC, Florida, & Villanova for the most number of championships in your lifetime.)
-UConn won its first championship, in 1999, despite being 9.5 point underdogs vs. Duke. This remains the largest point spread upset in men’s NCG history.
-The UConn women have won eleven championships, tied with the UCLA men for the most of any NCAA basketball team. What I think is really cool, though, is that they both one the championship in 1995 - for UCLA, it was their eleventh (and most recent), while for UConn, it was their first (and longest ago).
-Since 2007, the only non-Top 2 seed to win the tournament was UConn, and they did it twice: 2011, as a 3 seed and 2014, as a 7 seed. They’re still the only 7 seed to win the tournament - only 1985 Villanova was a lower seed (8).
-Some of the NBA talents to play at UConn include Ray Allen, Kemba Walker, Rudy Gay, Andre Drummond, Richard Hamilton, Jeremy Lamb, Cliff Robinson, and Caron Butler.
-Speaking of Walker, it wouldn’t be a true Connecticut post without mentioning “Cardiac Kemba” leading UConn to five wins in five days at Madison Square Garden to win the Big East tournament (right before he’d lead them to a national championship.) Also, Jim Calhoun.
-UConn has ended some notable cinderella/underdog runs - like Gonzaga’s 1999 Elite Eight campaign, Alabama’s only Elite Eight appearance (in 2004), Butler’s Haywardless return to the title game in 2011, and Kentucky’s run to the title game in 2014. Those last three were all eight seeds - giving them the strange distinction of having beaten 37.5% of all eight seeds to reach the Elite Eight, including the three most recent ones.
-While they certainly have had a large majority of their success within the last 25 years, UConn wasn’t exactly a complete joke of a program prior to that, either. Before their first championship in 1999, they had already made four Elite Eights, ten Sweet Sixteens, and twenty tournaments overall.
-I have to mention THIS GAME, the single craziest basketball game I ever remember watching.
-The only other Connecticut school to win a D1 game is Yale. They qualified for the 1949 eight-team tournament, but lost both their main game and consolation game. After first round losses in 1957 and 1962, they wouldn’t reach the tournament again until 2016, when they upset Baylor, perhaps due to out-rebounding them.
-Yale’s losses in 1957 and 1962 came to UNC and Wake Forest, respectively, and their second round loss in 2016 came to Duke, meaning they have already lost to ¾ of the Tobacco Road teams despite only having appeared in five tournaments.
-Consistent with the dominance of the Ivy League in the early years of college sports, Yale is considered a 4x champion by Premo-Porretta (1896, 1897, 1899, 1900), and a 2x champion by Helms (1901, 1903). One of their wins in that 1896 season came against the “Dr. Savage Physical Institute”. (Bring back DSPI basketball!)
-Chris Dudley played for the Bulldogs in college and went on to have a long NBA career. He also ran for Oregon governor but lost. Miye Oni, who was drafted out of Yale in 2019, is currently a bench player for the Utah Jazz.
-Central Connecticut State (CCSU) is known as the Blue Devils. They have combined with the only other D1 team that goes by Blue Devils for 44 tournament appearances, 105 wins, 28 sweet sixteens, 16 final fours, and 5 championships.
-During their time in D1, CCSU makes the NCAA tournament if and only if they were the conference’s regular season champions. The three times that they were, they also won their conference tournament, but they’ve never been able to win it otherwise. This might seem like the logical thing to happen, but conference tournaments tend to be very chaotic so it's actually pretty surprising they never stumbled as the 1 seed or went on an underdog run as the non-1 seed. In fact, the 1 seed in the NEC has won the tournament just twice in the past nine years.
-Corsley Edwards, who helped CCSU to their first two tournament appearances, was chosen in the 2nd round of the NBA Draft. Sadly, he only played briefly in the NBA, but he did have a lengthy international career.
-The coach for CCSU during all three of their tournament appearances was named “Howie Dickenman”. Bet he was the target of a lot of jokes in middle school.
-Fairfield was blown out in their first two appearances by Illinois and Indiana, but made things interesting in 1997 against UNC despite being a 16 seed. They led by seven at the half, and were leading as late as 14:32 in the second half. They were within a possession of the Tar Heels with 3:33 to go, but UNC finished strong and avoided the upset.
-In 2005, Fairfield power forward and future NBAer Deng Gai led the nation in blocked shots/game, with 5.5. He also remains in the top ten all-time blocks leaders in NCAA D1 basketball, with 442.
-Assuming they follow through with their plans to leave Division I, Hartford will become the most recent team to appear in the D1 tournament not still part of Division I. That distinction is currently held by Cal State-Los Angeles, who appeared in 1974.