LOL and you have no idea what it was like the two eras before JC.
Always a respected team in The Yankee Conference but little top 25 recognition. Many a great player at the field house and still considered some of the best. Cellar of The Big East in the beginning with many calling for the team to go back to The YC.
Along comes JC, I am all about a coaching staff and players being one. Yes the staff is in charge but it is still a team effort. JC walked through the door as professor swag 101 and recruited players that he knew would (or possibly) meet his tenacity and thus many of the players listed above. He should be listed on the team #1.
I’ve been a UConn fan since the fifties
First of all UConn didn’t go from the the Yankee conference which died in 1975 when it lost its auto-bid and dissolved as a BB conference. We transisitioned to a loose group called the ECAC*from 1976-1979 which held a year end Tournment to see who would get a bid .
We won our Div in 1979 beating a very good PC. Team, then Loosing to a 4th ranked Cuse team ( The Louie and Bowie) FF team) 68-61. That year pretty much guaranteed inclusion in the Classic Big East
We had a great recruiting class and other than a Yankee conference caliber coach we were poised to burst into national prominence. I‘m not of the opinion .
JC built a program from scratch that’s absurd ,but rather he was the missing piece in the quest to national prominence. Do you really believe a hot coach like JC would come here if he thought the foundation for success didn’t already exist. That being said even those of us who knew we had scored a winner never dared to imagine the success ultimately achieved.
My late friend an ESPN executive and Northeastern graduate stopped at my house heartbroken they had lost such a gem . I was absolutely giddy at the prospect.
But Taking over a team playing in the best conference in the country with an incredible history and visibility and a great fan base is not exactly building a program from scratch but making them dominate in that league of giants is his real legacy.
I don’t think we ever finished last in the BE in fact we were initially very competitive.. But it was apparent Perno was way over his head and a number of debacles. The Earl Kelly suspension and some academic issues doomed him. Even Perno’s teams were rarely blown out but our inside joke was how will Dom find a way to lose at the end.
No basketball fan was clamoring to get out of the Big East as attendance was good and we knew that the conference was the right thing at the right time especially with the emergence of ESPN. Even being competitive in that league made us a national player.
* The ECAC gave birth to the Big East, A10, and even the MAAC conferences . Penn State was a member and applied for the Big East in 1982 but was rejected.
Maybe it was a good basketball decision but ultimately critical to the dissolution of the Big East
