The Empire Solidified....

[coachcap]

Once upon a time, Husky Men's Basketball played in the Yan-Con & a basketball season was considered successful if UConn took that league's title & beat Yale in the annual home & home series.
In the 70's, success was defined by winning the New England Championship play-in series to the NCAA tournament in Springfield.
The came the Big East: UConn wins the inaugural game in New Haven by scoring over 90 points.
Again the bar is raised: First was to win enough conference tilts to avoid the dreaded 8-9 game. Next to fill MSG with busloads of Husky fans for a St. John's home game annually, so much so, that the then Red Men ordered Ticket Master not to sell tickets to any entities with a zip code starting in 06.
The next step was to consistently win the Big East tournament
Finally, in 1999, after years of being left at the door step, a National Championship arrives in Storrs.
The Huskies marketing Department declares Connecticut as the 6th NYC burrough.
Last night, after championship No.5 is locked up, Dan Hurley speaks about Jersey City now being a firm part of Husky Nation. But it is more than that: UConn has annexed Texas for tournament success, shown Phil Knight in person that Nike sponsorship will reap deep dividends, & as a final symbol of Husky dominance, moments after the title was sealed, the Empire State Building was lit up in National Flag Blue.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The biggest pivot points of UConn's rise were:

1) Calhoun taking the job. I wonder how many coaches said "not interested" in the spring of 1986 before the UConn AD got to a 40-something, foul-tempered, low-major head coach with no coaching tree pedigree.

2) Nadav Henefeld's recruitment. The Dream Season is not the Dream Season without Henefeld. Without Nadav, UConn is probably an 8 or 9 seed that year, and maybe makes the second round before getting steam-rolled. Henefeld turns a decent bubble team into a Top 10 team, and we have an amazing season that sets the table for:

3) The 1991 Recruiting Class - Donyell, Donny, Fair, Ollie, Johnson and Willingham were UConn's first truly top recruiting class. Now UConn could compete with the big boys without needing one-year foreign students or getting lucky. These players attracted more top talent, and UConn started putting a lot of players in the NBA, which super-charged recruiting.

4) 1995 - UConn lost to UCLA by 6. UConn was probably the second best team in the country, and would have not faced UCLA if Tyus Edney had not gone coast to coast to beat Missouri at the buzzer in the second round. I think that if Calhoun won a title in 1995, he might have gone to the NBA or another school to build another program. He has said he considered leaving in 1999 after winning the title, but by that point he was almost 57 years old, so he decided to stay at UConn.

5) The First Big East Raid - The Big East was starting to get tired as a hoops conference by the early 2000's. Programs like Miami, BCU and Virginia Tech weren't really trying in basketball, and were dragging down the rest of the league. Then they left, and the league replaced them with Marquette, Louisville, Cincinnati, Depaul and USF. USF sucked, and Depaul is Depaul, but the other three were major upgrades over the departing schools. Recruiting improved across the schools, with teams like Louisville, Villanova, Georgetown and Syracuse making final fours, in some cases after long hiatuses, and Pitt, Cincinnati, and Marquette improving and becoming strong programs. I will always view the 2005 to 2013 era as the Big East's Golden Age. The 2011 season in particular was incredible with how deep the league was.

6) Second Big East Raid - This was almost Armageddon for UConn. UConn stuck around in the AAC for A) football, but B) really to collect on all the exit fees from the other departing schools, which ended up being split between USF, Cincinnati and UConn. This was a short-sighted decision, and could have destroyed UConn athletics. It would have if UConn had waited even one more year to leave the AAC. Being the northern outlier in a southern mid-major conference was devastating to all three major programs. The athletic program is lucky to have survived it.

7) Return to the Top - Hurley did a great job getting UConn back to the top, and Mora has done a great job getting the football program a pulse. Now it is up to Benedict to figure out a stable long-term solution.