UConn Wins, Proves Everyone Outside Connecticut Wrong

The UConn Huskies are the 2014 NCAA National Champions.

There are no words in the English language sufficient to describe how much I loved writing that sentence.

And I think one of the reasons it’s so very satisfying is because no one outside UConn Country believed it would happen. 11.01 million brackets were submitted on ESPN.com, and only 0.3 percent (all of whom were presumably in the A Dime Back pool) picked UConn to hoist the trophy. The Huskies were drastically underseeded as a 7. UMass as a 6 seemed silly when the seedings were announced. It’s downright laughable now.

March is always a strange time of year. At A Dime Back, we are unabashedly UConn homers. We wear it proudly. But that means we watch every game, read every story, and actually, you know, do some reporting about the team during the season. We know this team. We know the players. So when the national writers start pontificating about a team they have spent precisely zero minutes watching all year it just brings the rage. In one day I read that UConn can’t run and is weak on defense. What the what? Is there another UConn I should have been watching this year?

No one paid any attention to UConn last year. They were banned from the post season, so why bother watching? Well, in Connecticut, we watched. And we saw a team that worked hard. That took the stairs because escalators are for cowards. We saw a team that played because they wore UConn on their chests. And that means something.

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So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on the The People Who Know About College Basketball (PWKACB). They didn’t see what I saw. But they should have.

In every game, including against St. Joseph’s when UConn was the higher seed, it seemed like the PWKACB were convinced that the Huskies couldn’t win. But they did. The OT win, which went into extra time because of Amida Brimah’s timely put-back and made free throw, was the closest the Huskies came to losing in the tournament.

Then came Nova, who went out to an early lead. And with Bazz on the bench in foul trouble it was up to Boat and freshman guard Terrance Samuel to get the game back. And they did. T-Sam, who earned his minutes by wreaking havoc on defense, got no love from the national press. KO went into the half guaranteeing a win. Twitter scoffed. But he was right. UConn came back from the half and surged ahead. And they never looked back.

Then it was Michigan State and Adreian Payne: big, tough and a shooter on top of it. No way UConn was keeping him out of the paint. Except they did. Payne had to settle for three-pointers as Phil Nolan and Amida Brimah refused to let him into their yard. Even when UConn was losing, and the shots weren’t falling, the Huskies refused to go down. They stayed calm, and they never wavered in their belief that they would win. That’s what experience gets you, folks. Let Calipari stack his team with freshman. I’ll take the veterans any day.

How many times this week did I hear some moron on TV say, “Can UConn beat Florida?” Which, naturally, prompted me to yell back, “THEY ALREADY DID YOU [unprintable] [also unprintable] [definitely unprintable, my mom reads this].”

Kevin Ollie is too inexperienced, they said. He can’t beat Tom Izzo or Billy Donovan or John Calipari. Except he did. The UConn coaching staff drew up flawless game plans, and the Huskies executed to perfection. When Florida went to its 1-3-1 defense, KO adjusted. Ollie, who always looks like he was about run out on the court and start playing defense, did a masterful job guiding this team through the tournament. (NBA peeps, stay the eff away. He’s ours, and you can’t have him.)

All season, my brother and I have been nearly giddy about the fact that this team makes their free throws. Glen Miller stumbled on a YouTube video of a Steve Nash free throw drill: hit as many as you can in a minute. Ollie and his staff adopted it, running the drill several times a practice. Hit 17 or sprint. So they got used to hitting free throws under pressure, when their bodies were exhausted. So making free throws in high pressure situations just became a matter of muscle memory. It wasn’t an accident that this team hit over 90 percent of their free throws at the end of games. It’s why Donovan and Calipari didn’t even bother fouling in the final minutes. What was the point? They knew what we all did: UConn makes all of their damn free throws.

And then there’s the Boat Show. Sometime in the last month Ryan Boatright became a ferocious defender. It’s like Ricky Moore transferred his defensive spirit animal into Boat. Against Florida, Boat made Scottie Wilbekin’s life miserable. Wilbekin didn’t see the lane all night. Which is exactly what Boat intended.

The PWKACB all said UConn’s undersized guards (Boat and Bazz are charitably listed at 6’0” and 6’1” respectively) were too little to stop the 6’6” Harrison twins. But the PWKACB don’t know Bazz and Boat. They don’t know that they’re warriors. They don’t know that they have no conscience on defense, that they don’t get pushed around. And that they don’t back down. Ever. Those two are scrappers. They haven’t been handed anything, not on the court, and not in life. When Boat turned his ankle late in the game, there was never a moment when I thought he wasn’t coming back. An ankle sprain? Please. Boat’s not going out unless his ankle falls off.  And what happened? Experience and toughness triumphed over size, and the Harrison twins looked like kids playing against grownups.

Shabazz Napier is smarter than just about everyone on the floor. He was the best player in the tournament, and ran his team with poise and confidence. But UConn was never a one-man show, and the PKACB did the team a disservice by treating them as such. They kept comparing Bazz to Kemba, and while there is certainly something to the comparison, the 2011 and 2014 teams are drastically different. Kemba did have Jeremy Lamb and Alex Oriakhi, but when Kemba wasn’t in the game, the Huskies were in trouble. This team felt more like, well, a team. There was Niels Giffey hitting clutch threes against Kentucky, and somehow transforming himself into a power forward, rebounding monster against Michigan. There was DeAndre Daniels having a shoot-the-lights-out game against Florida. There was Lasan Kromah and Samuels and, of course, Boat, making their guys so uncomfortable they couldn’t get going.

But even more than that, these guys seemed to genuinely love each other. They talked about it every game, their brotherhood. T-Sam doing the Three Sweep, and everyone having each other’s back. Team chemistry like that is rare. And you don’t win without it.

UConn had a lot of intangibles that none of the pundits seemed to give any weight. Yes, Kentucky had a bunch of freshman who are going to have real NBA careers. Good for them. The Huskies had experience. They’ve been here before. They went through the wringer together, and came out the other side stronger. And you know the Huskies used the non-belief from the PWKACB as motivation. You don’t think we can win? Fine. We’ll show you.

And, maybe most importantly, they genuinely believed they would win. They believed in themselves, they believed in their coach and they believed in each other.

On Senior Night, when Coach Ollie promised to come back in April with a banner, people thought he was nuts. But that belief, that motivation, that faith was rewarded. Because yesterday Bazz was inducted into the Huskies of Honor club. And UConn raised its fourth National Championship banner. Damn it feels good to be a Husky.