UConn basketball’s 45-year odyssey from lapdogs to leaders of the NCAA pack

[ad_1]

There was a time when some people in Connecticut thought the state university was barking up the wrong tree when it came to college basketball.

Today, the UConn men’s and women’s basketball programs are the gold standard in the sport. The women might not have won it all since 2016, their 11th title, but they remain a powerhouse with six Final Four appearances in the past seven tournaments.

This dominance — 17 combined titles since 1995, the first of the women’s titles, and now back-to-back men’s championships under Dan Hurley — could not have been predicted at the start of my sports journalism career.

The first half of my professional life had connections to UConn. I worked for 18 years in Bridgeport, Conn., at a newspaper now known as the Connecticut Post. I was sports editor there for about half of that time and directed our coverage of the Huskies.

UConn was just making its way into the land of big-time college athletics when I was starting. UConn was a charter member of the Big East Conference when it was formed in 1979. From the start, the Big East had big plans. Late that year, as a college reporter, I interviewed the first Big East commissioner, Dave Gavitt, and he told me the conference already was eyeing expansion, targeting Philadelphia and at least one of that city’s renowned Big Five schools.

The Big East was born because it was becoming more difficult for independent schools to schedule. Led by a group of athletic directors at independent Catholic schools such as Georgetown and Providence, the Big East became a reality. The original invitations went out to a few state schools too, which is how UConn came to be invited.

Many of these colleges had one thing in common: solid men’s basketball programs, and no football teams of note. From the start, this was created as a basketball league.

My interview with Gavitt took place at Penn State, which three years later would also be considered for membership. The college sports landscape over the past three…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/uconn-basketballs-45-odyssey-lapdogs-192047145.html

Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic

Publish date : 2024-04-10 19:20:47

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.