Not just that, the two toughest losses they've suffered as a program. My recon told me they were quietly optimistic going in. And we made them give up. Who cares about a team that gives up?
I agree it's a nice article. Many flattering things about UConn acknowledged. But earlier in the thread I shared the three times the author shared the conclusion that for all our greatness, we are not a blue blood. I'm not sure what's misconstrued, @SwingDog .
I were UConn gear all over the country. Favorable reactions probably 10:1
The comment had nothing directly to do with Calhoun's arrival from Northeastern.
After reading the article it felt to me like your title was misleading because the writer himself didn't say UConn is not a blueblood.
The whole article implied that UConn is not a blue blood, including the last sentence:
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.
But they’ve been so much more consistently good than us. Sure we are close in NCs but the amount of runners-up, final fours, elite eights, etc dwarf ours. Same with regular season and conference tournaments (lol Yankee conference). And time spent ranked top 10. This applies to all the other accepted blue bloods UCLA, Kansas, and UK
It is harder for UCLA because everyone is paying players now (many top dollar) versus no one but them.
It helps when you’re gifted local arenas for 2-4 games per tournament.
Like we were this year! What a sign we've made it. Also Danny did NOT like a question implying we had home court advantage at the post game presser if I recall. "We won a ton of games to earn that!" he said, or something like that.
Helps when you’re consistently good and therefore get preferred seeding
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.