I’ll be honest: ranking Big East Tournament Championships is tough. It’s like ranking your children. You have a favorite, then a bunch that all feel pretty similar, and then one or two you forget about sometimes. It puts a lot of stress on me, but I owe it to my children to make sure they know where they stand, and UConn’s BET Championships deserve the same respect, so here we go.
7) 1998 – This was a great team and a satisfying win, though it’s largely overshadowed by the fact that the bulk of this team came back the next year to win again, and then win some other games, too. Khalid El-Amin took home MOP honors and Rashamel Jones was the joint-top scorer in the final.
6) 1999 – It felt very much like a coronation, and the focus was already on the NCAA Tournament, but this team actually gutted out a tough game against Seton Hall thanks to Kevin Freeman’s revenge tour after being left off of the All-Big East Team. This team also managed to bludgeon the last good St. John’s team so badly they turned into the St. John’s program you see before you today. If nothing else, UConn’s fourth title of the decade established it as the dominant program in the Big East.
5) 2004 – It’s hard to believe that the 2004 BET title is so low on this list, but what can I say? There have been a lot of awesome UConn BET titles. 2004 was notable for Emeka Okafor being absent up until the final, allowing Madison Square Gordon to take over and dominate. This may have been the best Gordon ever played at UConn in his career, as he set the record (since broken) with 81 points scored in a single Big East Tournament.
4) 1990 – Even going into the 1990 tournament with the Big East’s joint-best record, this UConn team was not considered a top contender for the title. Then Chris Smith and John Gwynn lit up some chumps from Georgetown and Syracuse, and a legend was born. This one gets bonus points for being UConn’s first BET title, but it loses some points for my being six at the time and not remembering it.
3) 2002 – A sentimental favorite for me, the 2002 final is one of the best UConn games I ever watched — an experience made all the better on my brand new, 25-inch CRT TV that I lugged up two flights of stairs into my dorm room in Alsop. Shout out to Adam Caparell, who watched the game with me, and whose filthy mouth necessitated closing the door and turning the volume up loud enough that passersby couldn’t understand anything he was saying. Taliek Brown’s 40-foot bomb to beat the shot clock with 35 seconds to play in the second overtime has to be one of the most unlikely daggers ever, but it was awfully satisfying.
2) 1996 – The Big East was a real “star power” league in 1996, and the 96 final provided one of the biggest marquee matchups in the country with Ray Allen vs. Allen Iverson. I remember some neighbors watched this game with us because they didn’t have cable, and we kind of bonded over this insanity that played out at the end.
1) 2011 – Was there any doubt? Five wins in five days, including this legendary shot. A legacy built en route to UConn’s third national title, and last in the Big East (until the next one). Too many great moments to recount here.
