Now elite, UConn joins college basketball’s blue-blood programs after winning its fifth NCAA Tournament title

HOUSTON — Titles mean everything in sports. They carry the most significance and bring irrefutable validation to a team’s greatness.

Monday night at NRG Stadium, the University of Connecticut Huskies held off a sneaky second-half surge from San Diego State to cinch the 2023 national championship by a 76-59 decision. UConn now has five national titles in its history, all of them since 1999. 

With 45 seconds remaining and the game no longer in doubt, Huskies coach Dan Hurley couldn’t contain himself any longer. He let it all out. The pent-up anxiety, the years of grueling himself through an unforgiving profession.

This puppy was over, and it was time. Out came a huge celebratory fist pump and a “YEAH!!!” to the UConn section behind the team bench that had to be heard over the din at least 40 rows back. 

“I told you, Coach! I told you!” freshman center Donovan Clingan said to UConn assistant Kimani Young, who was just screaming “We f—ing did it!” over and over and over. Assistant Luke Murray had a grin painted across his face that obviously caught the eyes of his father, Bill. And in short time, Tom Moore, who helped UConn win a few of these under Jim Calhoun, was overcome by his emotions over what his players had just accomplished.

The best among those players is the Final Four Most Outstanding Player: Adama Sanogo. He grabbed the loose ball as time expired and clutched it in his grasp. He might not let go of it until after the team parade.

UConn was crowned on Monday night in a coronation that verified once and for all the status of this college hoops powerhouse.

It was debatable heading into the Final Four. 

It’s undeniable now. 

The Huskies have as many national championships as Duke. And Indiana. They have more than Kansas, Villanova, Louisville and on and on. 

This is a blue blood program. If you needed a fifth title and a 5-0 record in national championship games to believe it, then believe it. No program has a better record on the ultimate stage — no one is even close. When UConn gets to the first Monday in April, it wins. 

For this team, it’s how it won. A fifth title alone would be enough, but Hurley’s team just peeled off one of the all-time NCAA Tournament runs. It was a level of destruction we rarely see. All six tournament games had double-digit margins and finished by an average of 

Want more blue-blood verification? Jim Calhoun, Kevin Ollie and Hurley have won national championships, doing so in three different conference iterations. The Huskies join fellow blue bloods Kentucky, UNC and Kansas as the only programs to win a national championship with three different head coaches. 

TeamNCAA ChampionshipsUCLA11 – 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1995Kentucky8 – 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, 1998, 2012North Carolina6 – 1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009, 2017Duke5 – 1991, 1992, 2001, 2010, 2015Indiana5 – 1940, 1953, 1976, 1981, 1987UConn5 – 1999, 2004, 2011, 2014, 2023Kansas4 – 1952, 1988, 2008, 2022

The Huskies won every NCAA Tournament game by 13 points or more, only the fifth team in history to do so. The four final rounds — which are supposed to be the four toughest games — saw UConn hold opponents to under 35%. No team had ever done it until this one. And no team until this UConn group won five tournament games by 15 points or more. 

Outrageous dominance.

And as for the five titles, only UCLA and Duke have ever won as many as five championships in a 25-year span. 

Non-Big East teams never stood a chance against this group this season. UConn won 17 games outside of Big East territory and won those games by 24-plus points on average, all of them by 10 points or more. The only other teams to ever do that were legendarily great: 1966-67 UCLA and 2008-09 North Carolina.

Blue bloods.

On Monday night, one more emphatic dismissal. San Diego State got out to a 10-6 lead, then missed 14 straight shots, the most consecutive missed field goals by any team in this tournament. The drought lasted 11 minutes, and it was ultimately what did in the Aztecs. 

The Huskies beat their six tournament opponents by 20 points. The 120-point advantage in this year’s Big Dance ranks sixth-best in the history of the event.

If not for a bizarre 2-6 stretch from Game 15 to Game 23, this 31-8 UConn team would go down as one of the best one of the past 25 years. Maybe it still can? It shattered the narrative that there were no great teams this season. We just witnessed greatness. The Huskies were everything you wanted in a national champion: aggressive, fast, long, athletic, defensive-minded, offensively opportunistic — and unflappable. 

On Jan. 18, 2020, the Huskies took a 61-55 loss at Villanova. Hurley was in his second season at Uconn. It was Villanova. Hardly a disgrace, especially not so far removed from that program winning its third national championship in 2018. 

But when Hurley went to the postgame press conference, he talked himself into a quote that was shared widely then and has only become more prominent since. On Monday night — 1,171 days later — it officially became the stuff of legend.

This is Hurley’s legacy. “People better get us now. That’s all. You better get us now because it … it’s coming.”

Engrave that all over the campus in Storrs. Prologue that became gospel. 

It was indeed coming, and on Monday night, it officially arrived. UConn is all the way back and has firmed up its blue-blood status indefinitely. This program is back to the top of the sport, and it belongs among the best. 

If all the records and runaway victories weren’t enough, then look ahead, because guess what: There’s even more coming. The UConn Huskies head into the immediacy of the offseason as the No. 1 team in college basketball.