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UConn men’s basketball made it look way too easy on their way to back-to-back national championships.
GLENDALE, AZ — The UConn Huskies were sweating bullets. They had hit choppy waters and openly started to wonder if all of this was worth it. Was it too late to turn back?
Leave it to Donovan Clingan to bring the group back together. The big man was in a leadership role now in his sophomore season, and he knew there was only one way to fight through adversity: By diving right in.
UConn’s journey to becoming men’s college basketball’s first back-to-back national champion in 17 years started in August when the team embarked on a European tour. After taking care of business in its exhibition schedule on the court, the team rented a boat on went out on the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Nice, France.
It should be like stepping into a postcard, right? Not exactly. The waves were big and ride was bumpy. Freshmen Stephon Castle and Jaylin Stewart were starting to feel sick to their stomachs and had to lay down. Several of the players didn’t know how to swim and had no interest in going into the water. Yet there was Clingan, the biggest Husky of them all at 7’2, 280 pounds, diving off the boat one cannonball at a time. Some of the other UConn players eventually followed suit.
“He’s a whale,” said senior guard Hassan Diarra said on Clingan’s comfort in the water. “I think he was swimming with them.”
This season was never supposed be smooth sailing for UConn. The team had lost three players to the NBA and five of its top eight scorers coming off last year’s stunning run to a national championship as a No. 4 seed. The Huskies entered this season picked third in their own conference behind Marquette and Creighton. As they tore through their European competition, UConn started to realize it was really good once again. Like, maybe even better than last year. Along the way, they started to build their chemistry off the court that would sustain them all year.
UConn put up one of the most dominant postseason runs ever in 2023 by winning their six NCAA tournament games by a combined 120 points. That was as a No. 4 seed. For an encore, the Huskies grabbed the No. 1 overall seed in the field and tore through the bracket with a cumulative +140 margin of victory, the biggest in the history of March Madness.
If any team was going to give UConn a real test, it was Purdue, their opponent in the national championship game. UConn never had to play a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed on either of their twin national championship runs until this game. The Boilermakers had the best player in the country in Zach Edey, and they had aced an impossibly difficult schedule from the very beginning of the season. The Huskies couldn’t wait for a challenge, but it turned out to be not much of one.
“Our pregame message was UConn is clearly the best team in the nation and Purdue is obviously the second best team,” head coach Danny Hurley said with confetti falling from the sky after the 75-60 win. “UConn has been ruling the last 30 years of basketball.”
With Hurley only 51 years old, the Huskies rule doesn’t seem ready to end any time soon.
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Alex Karaban remembers the moment he realized Cam Spencer was maniacally competitive. It was the first time he met him.
Karaban was going through shooting drills when Spencer made his visit to UConn as a graduate guard entering the transfer portal from Rutgers. Karaban told him he needed to commit just so he had some competition in the shooting drills. Spencer’s response? “Let’s do it right now.”
“That’s when I started to see the gears turn,” Karaban said. “Like, alright, this kid’s special.”
Spencer only had one scholarship offer out of high school, from Loyola Maryland. After lighting up the Patriot League for three years, he transferred to Rutgers, where he shot 43.4 percent from three. He decided to enter the transfer portal again looking to play on even bigger stages.
UConn needed another movement shooter after Jordan Hawkins left early to become a lottery pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. Spencer was a perfect fit for his role whipping around screens and hitting shots. He was also an easy match in the locker room with a fellow lunatic like Hurley.
UConn players said it isn’t uncommon to see Spencer punting balls and cussing himself out when he misses a few shots in practice. After growing up as the younger brother of former NCAA lacrosse king and current Golden State Warriors guard Pat Spencer, competing is all he’s ever known.
“If you wanted to have a singing competition, he’d go all out,” walk-on Andrew Hurley said.
Spencer was electric in the national championship game, sprinting off screens, attacking closeouts, and even faking Edey out on one drive that ended in an assist to Clingan for a dunk. As UConn celebrated in the locker room, there was Spencer still trying to crossover his teammates.
There might not have been another player in the country who could have filled the void of Hawkins’ off-ball shooting while also matching Hurley’s intensity. He worked for UConn just as hard as it worked for him.
This UConn team was absurdly dominant from the start of the season. Well, not the very start.
The Huskies’ title run began in secret with a closed door scrimmage at Virginia in an otherwise empty John Paul Jones arena. UConn was was on fire in the first half. In the second half, the Huskies got “smashed” according to Hurley. Was he mad?
“He wasn’t happy, that’s for sure,” walk-on and son Andrew Hurley said ahead of the Final Four. “Every loss is really bad here. It’s unacceptable to lose. Closed scrimmaged, packed house, it doesn’t matter.”
UConn’s performance in that scrimmage seems even more unbelievable in hindsight. They would go on to become the most dominant champion in the history of the sport by point differential. Virginia, meanwhile, put up a pathetic performance in the NCAA tournament and embarrassed the selection committee for picking them over more deserving teams. UConn players said they needed that moment to re-center them,
“It was a reminder that we are beatable,” senior Hassan Diarra said.
It sure didn’t look that way the rest of the season. Only six of UConn’s 37 wins came by single digits. The rest were blowouts. You’d never know it from the way UConn was coached.
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Freshman Youssouf Singare had a brain fart at practice during the middle of the year, forgetting his responsibilities and making the coaches stop the drill to reset. Hurley lost his mind.
Hurley ripped off his shirt and laid on the floor screaming.
“Youssouf! Are you kidding me?”
This was during the middle of the year with UConn already rolling through the Big East. That’s when the younger players on the team realized that it didn’t matter what the Huskies’ record or margin of victory was: Hurley was going to demand excellence even in the smallest moments. UConn wouldn’t be here celebrating another championship without it.
It’s supposed to be impossible to have continuity in this era of college basketball with NIL and the transfer portal hanging over every decision. Somehow, UConn achieved it even with major turnover.
Andre Jackson was UConn’s Swiss Army knife on their run to the title last year. He left school early after the national championship, and would go on to be selected by the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA Draft. Jackson is a player who should be impossible to replace: a hyper-athlete in a strong 6’6, 210-pound frame who could do just about everything on a basketball court other than shoot threes. Somehow, Hurley found a seamless replacement.
Stephon Castle committed to UConn in 11th grade. He continued to rise the rankings and would eventually emerge as a McDonald’s All-American, a five-star recruit, and a sure-first one-and-done lottery pick. Castle was a hand-in-glove fit in Jackson’s role: incredibly physical on both ends for a freshman with rare body control and touch around the basket. Just about the only thing Castle couldn’t do was shoot threes, but Hurley already knew how to work around that. In the national championship game, Castle was deployed several times as a screener who could make plays on the short roll. He overpowered the Purdue guards all night.
“I never won a state championship in high school,” Castle said on why he picked UConn over so many other offers. “I wanted to come here to win.”
Adama Sanogo was the Most Outstanding Player of the 2023 Final Four. When he left for the NBA, UConn knew it already had its monster in the middle to replace him. Donovan Clingan could have been a first-round pick last season had he declared for the draft. He was the Huskies’ secret weapon as a freshman, a per-minute superstar who could smother opponents with his length defensively. The biggest challenge would be keeping him on the floor: Clingan only played 20 minutes or more once as a freshman. At 280 pounds, how many minutes could UConn realistically get out of him?
Clingan went down in December, suffering a foot injury in a loss to Seton Hall that kept him out a month. The Huskies kept rolling without him, going undefeated until he re-entered the lineup. Hurley was conservative with his star big man when he returned, keeping him to only 22.6 minutes per game.
It didn’t matter. When Clingan was on the court, UConn routed everyone in their way. The best way to manage minutes to start garbage time early, and that’s exactly what the Huskies did all year long.
With Tristen Newton and Alex Karaban returning as starters from last year’s title game and Clingan moving into a bigger role, UConn knew it had a solid foundation to compete. Hurley believed he had a title team once he saw how good Spencer and Castle were. Spencer may not have been as quick as Hawkins, but he provided just as much shooting and arguably more ball handling and defense. Castle wasn’t the leaper Jackson was, but he was a little better as a shooter and was more wired to score. UConn didn’t miss a beat.
“Yeah, we lost three NBA guys,” Diarra said in the locker room. “But we have five now on this team.”
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The UConn greats sauntered around the floor in the glow of the program’s sixth national championship. Ray Allen talked about the dedication it takes from parents of young players keep their kids in the right mindset to play for someone like Hurley. Richard Hamilton was beaming over how much this means to the program’s past greats. Emeka Okafor said there’s no place like Storrs.
UConn had never won a national championship in basketball until 1995. Since then, the women’s program has 11 titles and the men now have six.
With a sixth national champion, UConn passes Duke and ties North Carolina on the men’s side. Only Kentucky (8) and UCLA (11) have more.
“This is the hardest playoffs to win,” Hurley said after the national championship game. “We’ve made it look a lot easier than it is.”
UConn has another big rebuilding job ahead of them. Clingan and Castle will be lottery picks. Tristen Newton, who just dominated his second straight national championship game on his way to Most Outstanding Player honors, is out of eligibility. Spencer is, too.
How does UConn keep this rolling?
“You get NBA level talent that are about the right things, total team guys,” Hurley said after the game. “You have the best staff in the country, and the resources UConn provides you with.”
Hurley is the new face of the men’s college basketball world with the old guard sliding into retirement. UConn has set the standard the rest of the sport is chasing. The players are going to change, but the principles won’t. Even in choppy waters, Hurley has instilled a confidence in his program to always find a solution. The Huskies reign supreme again.
