2018 was certainly a year that happened. We saw the UConn women lose another Final Four heartbreaker, the men replaced their coach and the football team might’ve played some games. It’s hard to say, really.
All the while, A Dime Back chugs on, winning awards and barely writing.
Even though there’s never been a UConn-themed podcast, we released nine episodes in 2018 (iTunes | Stitcher) including special appearances by Sterling Gibbs and Joe D’Ambrosio.
We #ranked the UConn/Tennessee rivalry, among other things. We mailbagged. We instagrammed — you double-tapped. We celebrated Tyler Olander’s birthday… a lot. We asked you to eat at J. Timothy’s and attend Yard Goats games. We were followed on Twitter by NBC Meteorologist Ryan Hanrahan (and Randy Edsall). We adopted a daughter, UConn lacrosse star Sydney Watson. UConn beat Syracuse.
A Dime Back was again viewed in every state in the union and dozens of other countries (shout Bolivia).
Again, 2018 definitely happened.
Let’s close the year out by engaging in our annual vanity exercise of revisiting our most-read posts (this list is literally 13% of everything we wrote this year).
You guys love recruiting news and Dan Hurley took his sweet time before giving you the first juicy morsel of 2018 by securing the commitment of Bouknight in September. Since then, UConn has added Jalen Gaffney and Akok Akok.
Oops! The ever-optimistic Meacham laid out the best-case scenario for UConn football before the season and you guys ate it up. A signal boost by a US Senator helped this piece eclipse Meach’s less popular 5 Reasons UConn Football Will Continue To Drag The Athletic Department Into Poverty And I Sleep In My Car.
This piece, while analytically brilliant, was also our victory lap for breaking the news of Hurley’s hiring. Not sure if you guys heard, but we broke the news of Hurley’s hiring. More on this later.
It’s absolutely hilarious to remember that Benedict read this piece. But he did deserve the criticism after scolding the fans for his football program’s overwhelming badness. Benedict had an… interesting… 2018.
Prior to Kevin Ollie’s firing, Russ took a stab at predicting who would roam the sidelines for UConn this year. Fortunately for everyone, number 65 didn’t happen.
Prescient. In this piece we discussed the merits of replacing Ollie at the end of the year.
Prior to Bouknight’s commitment, we penned this piece advocating for UConn to land five-star recruit Precious Achiuwa because “UConn should get good players” is the type of groundbreaking analysis you’ve come to expect from Russ Steinberg’s A Dime Back Dot Com.
If you haven’t heard, we broke the news of Dan Hurley’s hiring. In perhaps the most UConn-In-2018 moment of the year, the site crashed within seconds of posting and most of you found out about the hiring from twitter (or the national writers who used our work without crediting us). It was very cool.
No one cares about women’s basketball! Except those of you who made Meghan’s profanity laden critique of Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale (and the corresponding media coverage) our second-most popular post of 2018.
A guest post at number one? 2018, you crazy. @NoEscalators penned this prolix assessment of UConn’s place in the college sports world (with maps!). It turns out making no money in a bad conference might not be good for the bottom line.
