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Message: [QUOTE="Towney007, post: 2006056, member: 5832"] I always felt '95 and '96 were good enough to win the national title. The later more than the former. In '95, there were a lot of good teams. I feel like Arkansas and North Carolina were really tough outs. Same with UCLA. I think we murder UMass or OK State out of the other bracket. I guess let's put it this way - we were cleanly the best team that didn't make the final four that year, I felt - and I def. think we were better than OK State, who DID make the Final Four. A better draw and maybe things are a bit different. '96 was - I felt - our first BONAFIDE National title or bust kind of team. I think we got a little unlucky getting stuck with Mississippi State in our bracket. That team was something like pre-season #3 or #4 and really underperformed all season until the SEC tournament when they just started whacking the out of teams left and right. Dampier, Jones and Bullard were all a handful. That and we just didn't play our best game that night. We get through that - I think we play UMass or Kentucky in the final. '94 was a weird year luck-wise, too. I was younger - so my memory is foggy - but I remember being really offed that Mizzou was given the #1 seed out West and we had to eat a #2 in the East AND got bracketed with having to face Florida in Miami. I mean that stuff evens itself out I suppose (MSG in '14 was nice) - but I felt like we had Final Four potential that year, too. Of the title teams - I always felt like '11 was a really, really good ballclub that just hit the skids for a longer stretch than most good teams do. Once that team started clicking, they were as good as any UConn team I can ever remember. '14 was def. our Cinderella run. I feel like all the blue bloods have years like that, though.. where they win a title in spite of not being world beaters. Kentucky's '98 team was kind of 'meh.' The '90 Duke team that made that run before getting plowed by UNLV was good - but I wasn't blown away by them even though we lost to them. They happen and I don't think it's a mark against us or anything. '09 I felt was - overall - a more talented team than the '96 team - but I would have lovedto have seen those two teams play each other. 2006 was another heart breaker but I always felt like there were some cracks that showed with that club that kind of caught up to them. Everyone else was more or less where they should have been. '99 team didn't shock me beating Duke - even though that's arguably Duke's best team ever. 2004 was underseeded in the tournament and I felt were the best team in the country from the word go. [/QUOTE]

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