By Disgruntled

The Maui 2024 tournament has mercifully come to an end for myself and Husky fans alike. I’m currently sitting in my living room, polishing away the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers, and rewatching UConn’s first signature win of the season over the #15-ranked Baylor Bears. But even after this win and all that has been said and done in Maui, the beginning of this season has made one thing utterly clear to me: UConn men’s basketball will never be considered a “Blue-Blood” program.

And who would want to be, when you could be the UConn Huskies instead?

Before I start to really pop off, I believe we owe it to the programs considered Blue-Bloods to show some veneration. It feels like many UConn fans over the last 2 years have resorted to trolling, picking fights, and being downright disrespectful, online and even in-person, to anyone who does not consider Gampel Pavilion the singular Mecca of college basketball. But in order to get respect, you have to give it. No one will ever match John Wooden’s run of 11 national championships. Kansas is the site of the foundation of the game and provides thousands of fans year in and year out with perhaps the best home atmosphere for college basketball in the country. Indiana’s 5 national championships, the iconic Bob Knight era, and the general fervor Indiana fans show for their hallowed basketball team in Bloomington have solidified them amongst the top all-time programs. UNC and Kentucky have had the historic and more relatively recent success to back up their Blue-Blood fame. And as much as I cringe to write it, Duke may deserve the most credit. Between coach K’s appearance on the Jim Calhoun 30-for-30 special, and the story of him advising Dan Hurley in an NCAA tournament game’s handshake line to leave URI and take the offer when a big-time program came calling when he certainly must have known, as many did at the time, that the school showing the most interest in hiring him was UConn, it is clear that the most important figure in Duke basketball history believes that UConn should be acknowledged and honored as a national basketball powerhouse. 

Now for the conceit: all the Blue-Blood programs have been labeled as such and receive national media acclaim because they are, to varying degrees, darlings of the college basketball world. If the inexplicable apprehension on the part of the pundits to cement UConn as a Blue-Blood after capping off the most dominant 25-year stretch seen since Wooden’s UCLA dynasty with an incredible back-to-back championship run, a feat that had not been accomplished in nearly 2 decades, was not evidence enough, the vehement and astounding backlash Dan Hurley received throughout the officiating farce that was this year’s Maui tournament should be: we are not, nor will ever be considered one of these darlings. Let’s be honest, they hate us.  I won’t name any names, but I can think of a few writers and podcasters who likely have had to take a few early lunch breaks to throw up in their trash bins after being forced to talk about another UConn win and the success of the Dan Hurley system these past 2 seasons. 

This year’s Maui tournament was truly their moment in the sun. Some more rational viewers of this past Maui tournament may have pointed to UConn’s opponent’s average of 16.66 (repeating, of course) more free throw attempts per game over the course of the event, an aggregate +24 team foul differential in favor of UConn’s opponents, or the multiple whistles on UConn defenders for literally standing behind someone (see early 2^nd half call versus Colorado on Samson Johnson in the corner 3-point arc area, late-game call on Solo Ball after he was elbowed in the face against Memphis), as significant factors in determining the outcomes of all three games. Others, however, believed they were finally observing the christening of UConn’s downfall. With that came an absolute crucifixion of Dan Hurley in the media. “He’s a madman!” They shouted with glee. Pundits began positing wild conspiracy theories of officials colluding to “get him under control.” To these kinds of people, Dan Hurley is a threat that needs to be contained at all costs. I agree with them. Dan Hurley is a threat. He is a threat to the next team on our schedule. He is a threat to the Big East Conference. He’s a threat to your team’s championship aspirations this season. He’s a threat to anyone betting against the spread. Most significantly, he is a threat to the fragile delusion that the old Blue-Blood order will live forever, untouchable, unaltered, unblemished. 

I have some more bad news for UConn’s detractors: I believe we have not yet seen the best of Dan Hurley. The past two years, however glorious, have felt unreal to me as a UConn fan, like coming out of anesthesia after a colonoscopy. It was supposed to have been so difficult, but somehow it seemed so easy. The righteous indignation that the Maui tournament afforded me this year has made me feel like an old-school UConn fan again because of an interesting intersection in my own psychology and the psychology of the pundits I so despise. In a sense, it is difficult for both camps to truly see UConn as a blue-blood. We both will forever see UConn as the plucky underdog, facing outsized odds and needing an absolute miracle to pull off the impossible. The difference between us is that they will always be the ones believing U-can’t, and I will always be the one believing U-can, and regardless of what any of us believe, UConn will continue winning national championships. They’ve taken the bait harder than they ever have before. It is precisely when the Huskies face the greatest amount of adversity, scrutiny, and doubt that we begin to perform truest to our identity. 

I also believe that the pundits who so enjoy detracting from UConn’s success will be on the wrong side of college basketball history. In many ways, they already are. They hate us for all the wrong reasons. They don’t like the heart, and grit, and toughness we play with every night. They don’t like the conference we play in; it doesn’t make enough money. They are the ones incessantly proclaiming that we shouldn’t be able to do it, declaring every national championship appearance that we aren’t supposed to be here, swallowing their pride to type out the newspaper headline the next day that we did it anyway. They root for the Blue-Bloods. The favorites. The expected outcome. Big state. They don’t want their world to be shocked. They wake up in a cold sweat in their bed in the dark, the nightmare of Khalid El-Amin’s joyous visage letting them know that we shocked it nonetheless replaying over and over again in their head. Let’s be real: Dan Hurley was never the bad guy. I mean, how boring are these people?

So, to my fellow UConn faithful, I feel like even before Maui, we’ve been absolutely freaking out about every slight misstep this team has taken. I have one message: believe, believe, believe. This team has the same relentlessness, leadership, and desire as any UConn team I’ve seen over the years. And to the pundits, keep doubting us. Keep villainizing our coach. Keep encouraging the committee to put all those Big 10 teams into the tournament over the Big East ones – it makes our road to #7 that much easier. And keep denying us your coveted status of so-called “Blue-Blood”. The UConn Huskies would not be the UConn Huskies without you.