San Diego Union Tribune: "UConn still not a Blue Blood."

[Rocktheworld]

It helps when you’re gifted local arenas for 2-4 games per tournament.

Helps when you’re consistently good and therefore get preferred seeding

 

[freescooter]

I'm too lazy too check but Duke's success starts only a decade or so before ours, and everyone discounts that UConn was piling up conference championships and NCAA appearances in the Yankee.

That’s not really accurate about Duke. I am not a fan of Duke but the reality is that they were a “national” program for decades. Didn’t win national championships until K arrived but played in the championship game in the 60s, 70s, 80s. And the ACC was a major conference in those years. It really isn’t comparable to UConn winning the Yankee Conference. The YanCon in those days was closer to the MAAC today. In fact when Calhoun made some runs, there were commentators who noted that UConn had the most NCAA appearances of any team without a title. Of course then they would point out that most (at that time) were from the YanCon and you wouldn’t expect them to go too far. UConn won like 4 NCAA tournament games before Calhoun. Duke had been to multiple final fours and championship games. Which makes what Calhoun built even more amazing in some ways. The one time Duke and UConn met in the tournament before Calhoun, UConn had advanced to the Elite 8 with an upset of Princeton and Duke blew them out of the building by 50 points. That is probably a fair comparison of where the 2 programs were in the pecking order. Duke went on to lose to UCLA in the finals.

I’m not knocking what UConn did. They didn’t even think they were national player during the Yankee Conference years and they didn’t try to be a national player. In todays parlance they were a mid-major.