Team with Highest Expectations?

[nelsonmuntz]

I thought the 2006 team was going to win almost every game in the Big East by 10+ points. I thought the gap between that team and every other team in the country was a canyon. They pulled one game after another out of their but all season and the lack of a second ball-handler finally caught up with them.

 

[CTBasketball]

I'm to young to know any team past 2010, but I know the 2011 team definitely underachieve.

Sound like the year 2004 was a fun year to be a husky!

You haven't seen a good team yet.

 

[whaler11]

I'm to young to know any team past 2010, but I know the 2011 team definitely underachieve.

Sound like the year 2004 was a fun year to be a husky!

Yeah the 2011 team should have won an NBA title. What a waste. If you don't remember a team prior to 2010 - that makes you...9?

 

[Gurleyman]

I must have been the only person watching the 2006 team who had no faith in them. I honestly feared being the first team to lose a 1-16 game, and that almost happened. There wasn't an abundance of talent on that team - they are all in their prime right now, and the only one in the NBA is the butt of Bill Simmons jokes. The 1999 team perhaps didn't have an abundance of NBA talent either (although Jake stuck around awhile), but there was chemistry and cohesiveness with that group, and a great college player in Khalid.

Also when you talk about preseason expectations for 2006, you can't ignore the fact that our PG was suspended, and there was total uncertainty about what that was going to do. That scandal blew an elephant sized hole in the expectations for that team. It is revisionist history to act like we were all bubbly with anticipation for a juggernaut on Oct. 15.

The clearest winners in the expectations war were 1999 and 2004. Preseason No. 1 teams, suspension-free, coming off strong NCAA Tournament runs with just about everyone of consequence back (minus Monquencio Hardnett and Tony Robertson). We had them in 1995, but had lost Donyell, and 1996, but we had lost Donny-Ollie-Fair, so there were a few more questions.

 

[willie99]

the team's with the highest expectations had to be 2004 & 2006, both were expected to win it all from day 1.

04 ultimately met it's expectations, but JC was actually awarded the "uncoach of the year" by one sportswriter during the season

06 fell short

I think 09 met or exceeded expectations

 

[Huskyforlife]

Yeah the 2011 team should have won an NBA title. What a waste. If you don't remember a team prior to 2010 - that makes you...9?

No I'm in high school. didn't care about uconn until the beginning of that year O.O

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

2004 team. They were picked by Vitale to go all the way and they did. They had Gordon and Okafor.

The only reason I wouldn't say '99 is because Duke was the concensus No. 1 that year and Calhoun was still the "best Coach not to get to a Final Four."

But that might just be my own memory.

 

[kemba]

2004. The second the previous season ended I was thinking championship. Had a good mix of stars, veteran role guys, and talented freshmen.

The other years that I think are in the running are 99, 2006, 2009. 2006 was extremely deep. I think the reasons the expectations weren't quite as high as 04 were the suspensions, and that Rudy was still young and while we were hopeful he'd make the jump to a real superstar, it wasn't as expected as it was for Ben and Okafor.

99 had extremely high expectations too, but I think 04 and 06 anything short of a national championship would have been a disappointment, 99 we would have been happy with our first final four.

I don't think 2012 belongs on this list at all. Yea there was a lot of excitement about what we had coming back, and people knew if everything clicked we had a shot, but we were also counting on a lot of young players to take their game to a new level and be able to handle bigger roles. We weren't a consensus top 5 team like some of these other teams, opinions really varied.

 

[Dogdeacon]

I still think that Duke took a lot of pressure off Uconn in 1999. I think Husky fans knew Uconn could compete, but that Duke team was loaded.

I look back to 2005-2006 and there was no team that I thought was better than Uconn. Who the heck was good that year? Memphis and Duke maybe. And 2004-2005 was the year that Uconn had to replace All Americans. 2005-2006 was when Uconn had All American type players in Rudy and MWilliams. I know they were missing another ball handler, and perhaps I knew it at the time as well, but not getting to FF was shocking.

Dook took pressure off the 1999 team?! I think that's insane - the team still had to deal with the fact that UConn had NEVER made a final four or won a national championship. There was plenty of pressure within the hoarde and nationally speaking Dook got some attention and might have created an extra 'nobody believed in us' angle, but that played only a small part at most.


However UConn did take pressure off themselves by sitting RIP and Jake in the Syracuse game whereas if that was a postseason game they could have played. There I maintain that Calhoun chose to remove the potential pressure of being undefeated. That has nothing to do with the dookies though.

2004 easily had the highest expectations in my book. Along with plenty other UConn fans I got tickets via lottery to the San Antonio final four. Purchase was absolutely based on fact that I and many others gave UConn a better than 50% chance to make the final four or even with the title. 99 expectations were lower (final four) b/c of no prior final four experience or title and as allegedely talented 2006 team was they didn't have the hands down best returning dominant player that 2004 did.

 

[Jerry1714]

I would 1995-96 was maybe #1, then 98-99, 2005-06, 2003-04, and then 2010-11.

Those were the only 5 years I went into the season thinking anything less then a title was a disappointment. So 2 of the teams met my lofty expectations and three did not.

Going into the 96 and 06 tourneys there was not a doubt in mind we would be cutting the nets down

 

[Gurleyman]

I would 1995-96 was maybe #1, then 98-99, 2005-06, 2003-04, and then 2010-11.

Those were the only 5 years I went into the season thinking anything less then a title was a disappointment. So 2 of the teams met my lofty expectations and three did not.

Going into the 96 and 06 tourneys there was not a doubt in mind we would be cutting the nets down

How can anyone say that about 2006? We lost a 1-8 game to Cuse in the BET after limping into the postseason with a few soft wins in a row. I had doubts that we would get out of the first weekend.

There was never a point I had any confidence in that team. We jumped out to a 17-0 lead on a 7-24 South Florida team in the last week of the regular season, and I told myself, "this isn't over, we'll find a way to piss this away." Sure enough, USF cut it to one midway through the second half, before we won by 10. We followed that up by being tied in the final minute at home with a sub-.500 Louisville team (up 3, give up easy dribble penetration, leave guy open for a kickout, tying 3 - something we were really good at allowing). I genuinely feared the Albany game, since they had a 20 ppg guy at the two, and we couldn't defend two guards.

We did put it all together for a nice home win over Nova, and a game against Seton Hall that we won by 30, but that was it for "a" game department. Maybe one of the regular season games against Cuse too. In 1999, perhaps we didn't destroy weaker teams as often as we should, but the Stanford game without Rip, the two St. John's games, the last two Cuse games, Michigan State, etc., were all evidence of what we could do when we were on. We were tasting it after the BET (once we got the SH game out of our system). In 2004, I think going in, we were worried about Emeka's health holding up, but were optimistic after Ben and Boone stepped up without him in the BET. It wasn't until the steamroller got going that we knew we might be on our way to the stepladder.

1996, I certainly had hope of a Final Four, but that was Kentucky's best team under Pitino that won it and they were prohibitive favorites. After the first weekend, I just wanted to get through and hope to get Ricky back at the Final Four and give it our best shot.

 

[bobbygt]

Dook took pressure off the 1999 team?! I think that's insane - the team still had to deal with the fact that UConn had NEVER made a final four or won a national championship. There was plenty of pressure within the hoarde and nationally speaking Dook got some attention and might have created an extra 'nobody believed in us' angle, but that played only a small part at most.

I guess I'm basing my opinion on the tendency of people to get spoiled and have ridiculously high expectations once you start winning (elite level winning).

I thought the 99 team was awesome and yes, it would've sucked if they didn't get to the FF and possibly the NC game. But getting to the FF was a first. And I think that was a big accomplishment. Would it have been a big failure if they didn't get to the FF. I'd say yes. But I can't say that at the time that losing to Duke in the NC game would've been a failure. Disappointing and an opportunity lost? Definitely.

I think the 2005-2006 team had a lot of expectations. After two NCs and recruiting going very, very well (CV, AJ and Rudy, Bynum-doh!), I started expecting deep runs! But I do agree with Gurleyman in that it was not a complete shock that they lost to GM. They were close with Albany for a while and needed an incredible shot by Rashad to get past UW.

I guess I just had unrealistic expectations about that team.

 

[SubbaBub]

It's 06 hands down. In 99 we were a big dog to Duke despite basically splitting the season as #1.

04 was a close second but Duke was still there as a top favorite.

95 and 96 also had high expectations but we hadn't won anything yet so it was hard to be the consensus pick. There were a number of other good teams then.

03 had high expectations but clearly UNC was the favorite.

In 06, there was no one else even close to us if we played a decent game.

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[Inyatkin]

Some people are answering this as preseason expectations and others as pre-tourney expectations.

Preseason maybe 2006 is up there, but those suspensions made for a huge question mark. Pre-tournament, though, we were basically adrift, struggling to beat bad teams and seemingly primed for an upset. Which didn't make it any easier to take when it happened.

 

[7774]

It's amazing to me how much people overrate that 2006 squad. I can think of 7-8 other UCONN teams that would smoke that team.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

It's 06 hands down. In 99 we were a big dog to Duke despite basically splitting the season as #1.

04 was a close second but Duke was still there as a top favorite.

You have this backwards. UConn was everyone's pre-season national champion in 2004. In 2006 Duke, Texas, Villanova and MSU were all getting at least as much, if not more, pre-season hype.

 

[Excalibur]

I must have been the only person watching the 2006 team who had no faith in them.

You weren't the only one that felt that way.

Anyway, I'd say '04 has to be first in terms of expectations, as it was assumed from the beginning that we were the best team and would win the title. '99 had a bigger burden due to the lack of a Final Four appearance and JC getting the "best coach never to make the Final Four" label. Had that team lost in the Elite Eight, the sentiment that Calhoun could not get the team to the promised land would have grown considerably.

 

[SubbaBub]

Preseason expectations mean nothing. Come March 06 was the top overall seed. Though we knew they had the ability to sleepwalk through games, miss way open layups and fight each other for shots, they were the best team going in.

It wasn't until they almost lost to Albany did it sink in that they we in real trouble.
Once they slipped past UW, I figured they had their scare games out if the way. Hoo boy, was that wrong.

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[7774]

Preseason expectations mean nothing. Come March 06 was the top overall seed. Though we knew they had the ability to sleepwalk through games, miss way open layups and fight each other for shots, they were the best team going in.

It wasn't until they almost lost to Albany did it sink in that they we in real trouble.
Once they slipped past UW, I figured they had their scare games out if the way. Hoo boy, was that wrong.

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There is no way that they were the best team going in. They had the overall best body of work, but were playing their worst basketball of the season in March.

 

[Waquoit]

. Come March 06 was the top overall seed. ...It wasn't until they almost lost to Albany did it sink in that they we in real trouble.

It was much earlier for me. I got a bunch of aunts and uncles living in FLA to come to the USF game that year. After a hot start, they just quit playing. They barely hung on to beat a horribly, bad USF team. Albany would have crushed that USF team.

 

[Inyatkin]

There is no way that they were the best team going in. They had the overall best body of work, but were playing their worst basketball of the season in March.

It's funny, that Villanova game they always replay on SNY was in retrospect an aberration. It was the only good game we played for like a month. Right before that we almost blew a huge lead to Notre Dame, right after it was the South Florida near-disaster and Louisville, and then the single most painful postseason run in UConn history. Even the wins were excruciating.

 

[Gurleyman]

We're reinventing history with 2006. We were pessimistic at the start of the year due to suspensions, then optimistic when we went undefeated with Austrie at the point, including the Maui Tournament, then got slapped in the face by Marquette who just ran circles around us and almost scored 100. After that, we showed some flashes, but we couldn't match up with Nova the first time, and limped thru Feb and March with mostly close wins over bad teams (and one A game in the Nova rematch at home). The regular season record did not reflect the product we were putting out there.

We were simply not way better than our opponents every time we took the court. In March, we were down big to Syracuse and got lucky to comeback before McNamara beat us. We were down big to Albany (frankly until they got a little over-excited that they might be able to actually pull this off and started missing open shots), we couldn't defend Sparks from Kentucky and gave up 80+ points to an 8 seed, we got gift-wrapped the UW game by the officials when we were on the verge of being run out of the gym, and we couldn't guard anyone on George Mason.

Who was this team so much better than?

I'll say this - the 1999 team did sometimes have a problem with letting inferior teams hang around. But you will never see a college team any better at putting the clamps on in winning time. Even the one game they lost at full strength, the only points Miami scored down the stretch (last 5 minutes) were when Tim James caught a desperate airball with a minute to go and got fouled on an iffy call (but Jake probably bumped him).

The 2006 team didn't have a clamp in them - they couldn't stop anyone when the chips were down. They kept thinking they could just make more clutch shots, and through February it worked for some close wins. But you play with fire often enough, sometimes the other team makes more clutch shots (see: Orange, Syracuse; Mason, George).

I believed that 1999 team would come through. Two big-time scorers with the clutch gene, and a defense that would just lock you down. The 2006 had the first (MW, Rashad) element, but might have been the worst team we ever had at the second (at least among our contenders). The evidence was there in spades before we lost.

 

[Inyatkin]

...we couldn't match up with Nova the first time...

With you on everything but this. We were up big in that game, I think 12 in the second half, before Ray went off on us.

 

[Gurleyman]

With you on everything but this. We were up big in that game, I think 12 in the second half, before Ray went off on us.

Yeah - you're right. Brain got a little foggy. Rudy had a good stretch early in the second half to get us a lead, and then Nova stormed us. I remembered the end better than the earlier parts.

 

[Dogbreath2U]

Yeah - you're right. Brain got a little foggy. Rudy had a good stretch early in the second half to get us a lead, and then Nova stormed us. I remembered the end better than the earlier parts.

Do you actually remember the details that you are posting of those games or did you look them up? Amazing memory if you do, even with a slight slip about Nova or whatever.