Bohls: They didn't start out that way, but the powerful UConn Huskies proved they're No. 1

HOUSTON — The college basketball season ended the only way it could.

With a team that was unranked in November but unbeaten the last three weeks.

And undeniably the best.

While top seeds fell by the wayside with regular abandon and not a single 1, 2 or 3 seed reached the Final Four, UConn restored some much-needed order to these proceedings. Nobody could even give the Huskies a decent game from the tournament’s beginning to its confetti-strewn end Monday night.

The Huskies, who weren’t regarded highly enough to even crack the preseason Top 25 and then lost six of eight games in January to throw everything into doubt, thoroughly trounced San Diego State 76-59 on a Monday night that was more mundane than monumental.

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UConn (31-8) finished off these older but overmatched Aztecs in the same grand style they had every other team in their path to claim the school’s fifth national championship. The Huskies have now won titles in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.

Count UConn very much in the family of blue bloods, all of whom otherwise had largely deserted the postseason premises. Gone was Alabama, a team the Huskies pummeled and the No. 1 overall seed. Gone was defending national champion Kansas by Arkansas and its bare-chested Eric Musselman. Purdue, too, was stunned. So was hometown favorite Houston, who met the same fate as Texas and fell to Miami.

By game’s end Monday, the Huskies had won their sixth straight contest by double digits for an average lopsided margin of victory of 20 points, the fourth-highest average since the field expanded in 1985. Six wins by a 120-point margin. Sheer dominance.

“I came here to play on stages like this and win a national championship,” said point guard Tristen Newton, who transferred to UConn after three seasons at East Carolina. "We have shooters, the best big men, wings and everything.”

But coach Dan Hurley needed a point guard and found one in the slick-handling Newton, an El Paso native and cousin of former UTEP football star Aaron Jones who scored 19 points and pulled down 10 rebounds to key the victory.

“We can win any type of game,” said Newton, who joined shooting guard Jordan Hawkins and junior power forward and most outstanding player Adama Sanogo on the all-tournament team. “A pretty game. A physical game. Defense, offense, whatever. We’re an all-around great team.”

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That much became obvious from the outset of the tournament even though it trailed Rick Pitino’s Iona team by a point at halftime in the first round. Then Sanogo put the team on his back, the Huskies rattled off 50 points in the second half and cruised to a 24-point win. They punked both Arkansas and Gonzaga to punch their ticket to the Final Four.

The Huskies ran away with this game as they had this entire NCAA Tournament.

On this night before 72,423 fans, they were ahead for the last 34 minutes and constantly denied San Diego State with a suffocating defense and a balanced offense and raced to their 12th straight win in their last 13 games.

“We knew we were the best team in the tournament,” crowed Dan Hurley, UConn’s colorful, emotional coach who wore his new Champions cap backward in his trademark style and flashed five fingers to the adoring crowd representing the number of titles won by UConn.

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They don’t come more animated or authentic than Hurley, who's part of basketball royalty with the most famous of surnames and a Duke legend for a brother.

Hurley stood on the ladder and cut the last strand of fiber from one of the goals. He twirled the net around like a slingshot before draping it around his neck.

“I just think it’s such a hard tournament to be successful in and navigate,” Hurley said. “It’s not a seven-game series or a five-game series. And with the extra COVID year and the NIL and the portal, it’s made things even more challenging for the biggest brands and highest seeds to advance because there’s so much parity.”

No one asked him about repeating. He was too intent on celebrating UConn's fifth national title, which ties the Huskies for the fourth most championships with Duke and Indiana.

This kind of dominance could be difficult to duplicate. The lean, long and super athletic Hawkins is likely a first-round NBA pick. The Huskies’ 6-foot-6 playmaking guard Andre Jackson Jr. might follow him out the door.

And with 7-foot-2 freshman big man Donovan Clingan pushing for a starting role, some whisper that Sanogo might test the transfer portal waters in search of a sweeter NIL deal. Who wouldn’t be able to use a big man of his bulk and fire? Texas sure could.

“They beat us, and they were the better team,” San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher said after a 32-7 season. “They’re deserving national champions.”

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The Aztecs had never been beyond the Sweet 16 before although they’re hardly newcomers to the tournament. They were 30-2 and bound for a No. 2 seed when the pandemic canceled the 2020 postseason and stunned many when the fifth-seeded Mountain West champions knocked off No. 1 Alabama and Big East power Creighton to get here.

These Aztecs, who barely survived Florida Atlantic with a last-second buzzer beater by Lamont Butler, had a fitful time just trying to score baskets on UConn. They once went 11 minutes, 7 seconds without a single bucket in the first half and another fruitless, 5½-minute span in the second.

San Diego State actually led 10-6 with 16:32 left in the opening half but managed just five points — all on free throws — over the next dozen minutes. By that time, UConn had built an 11-point lead it maintained almost the duration of the game.

Over the last three weeks, the Huskies were the outlier as this three-week national lovefest played out.

In this wild, upset-filled tournament when a 16 seed stunned a No. 1 for only the second time in history — take a bow, Fairleigh Dickinson — UConn stood out. It was readily apparent the Aztecs would have no answer for as balanced a basketball team as has cut down the nets. Little surprise they were ranked No. 3 nationally in offensive efficiency and No. 8 on the defensive side. Cope with that, you other 67 teams.

Oddly enough, this Final Four contained three conference champions. UConn wasn’t one of them.

While San Diego State, Miami and Florida Atlantic all won their respective leagues, these indomitable Huskies finished in a tie for fourth in the rugged Big East. Shaka Smart’s Marquette club hung two of the eight defeats on UConn.

But it was a great blend of brawn and brainy play that made America ooh and aah over this dynamite team that got the one trophy it came for. Andrew Hurley, the coach’s son, got on the floor with other reserves for the final meaningless minute, and when the seconds ticked away, the junior guard ferociously spiked the ball and sent it soaring upward 20 feet in the air.

Amid all the clamor and confetti, Sanogo bounded to retrieve it and tuck it away for posterity. After scoring 17 points and adding 10 rebounds and a blocked shot, he’d earned it.

Back at the podium for the final press conference a half-hour later, a validated Dan Hurley answered every question, then stood and playfully grabbed up all the placards identifying the three Huskies players who had joined him on the stage.

“I’m taking these,” Hurley said, suddenly a 16-year-old playing street ball back in Jersey City again.

And why not? They’d taken everything else.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Unranked in November, UConn caught fire at just the right time