The University of Connecticut Huskies’ men’s basketball team and head coach Dan Hurley slowly but surely overpowered the Purdue Boilermakers 75-60 on Monday night, April 10, to capture their second consecutive title and sixth in program history. Unlike their Sweet 16 victory over Illinois, which was defined by a 30-0 run to open up the second half, UConn’s victory over Purdue wasn’t marked by one single shining moment and was rather a flawlessly executed victory that characterizes UConn’s run over the past two seasons perfectly: completely dominant.
UConn won their six games in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament by an average margin of 23.3 points, the highest by any NCAA champion. This ridiculous level of dominance isn’t unfamiliar or a fluke for Hurley and the Huskies, however, as they won last year’s tournament with an average margin of victory of 20 points as well. UConn now holds the numbers one and three spots on the list of highest average margin of victory for an NCAA tournament champion.
To complete a single tournament run with that level of preeminence is a one time occurrence for most programs, so to do it in back to back years with the same team is truly a rare peak for a program across any sport, any level.
Many scoffed at the thought of the Huskies repeating this year, as number one overall seeds and teams coming off a national title winning it all in the big dance are few and far between. In fact, the last team to win the tournament as the number one overall seed was the Kentucky Wildcats in 2012 and the last team to win back to back titles was the Florida Gators in 2006-2007.
Moreover, many pointed to UConn’s 2023 title run as being “easy” because they didn’t face any of the typical “blue-blood” programs such as Duke, Kentucky, or North Carolina. The Huskies title this year can dismiss any of those notions, facing one of the nations hottest offenses and a top individual offensive player in Illinois and Terrence Shannon Jr. and then later facing the unstoppable force and back to back AP player of the year in Zach Edey and his Purdue Boilermakers.
There were murmurs surrounding the future of the mastermind behind UConn’s greatness-Dan Hurley- as Kentucky, now in the absence of famed coach John Calipari, reportedly offered him a substantial amount of money that could have made him one of the highest paid coaches in NCAA men’s basketball history. Hurley turned down these rumors following UConn’s victory, however, and seeks to create a “dynasty” at UConn.
