The two-time defending national champions outlasted Oklahoma 67-59, in a game that was tied with six minutes to play, earning them a shot at No. 1-seed Florida on Sunday.
“The thing about this team is, we’re really battle-tested,” Huskies coach Dan Hurley said after his 13th straight tourney victory. “We’ve had to fight so hard all year that we showed a lot of toughness down the stretch to execute some things and make some critical shots and make some critical stops.”
Hurley praised that mental toughness of his team going into Friday’s unsurprisingly tight 8-9 game against the Sooners, while admitting, UConn doesn’t have the same level of confidence it has the past two years.
“When you’re coming in with 10 losses and you’re an 8 seed, our confidence isn’t going to be as high as last year’s team that just rolled through people and believed that every game was going to play out that way,” Hurley said this week. “With this group, I think being battle-tested, having gone through such a tumultuous season has forced this season to fight hard all year just to be in position to play in the tournament.”
Indeed, UConn rolled to the past two national titles, beating tourney foes by an average of 23.3 points per game last year, and by 20 in its 2023 title run.
This year’s team has been more jarhead than juggernaut, battling its way back into position for the college game’s first three-peat since UCLA and John Wooden claimed seven straight from 1967-1973, before the tournament expanded.
By virtue of its 23-10 record and No. 8 seed, entered the NCAAs without the expectations that might normally accompany a team in its position. But Hurley said his team isn’t exactly flying under the radar.
“I think with the way the season’s played out, we’ve been in the news a bunch,” Hurley said. “We get talked about a lot.”
Still, he said this year’s group — which he described as “more battle tested, just been through way more,” than the previous editions — doesn’t have the same level of outside pressure coming into this tournament.
“I feel like in a weird way it’s a little pressure off of us going into the tournament where, like, we could just go out and let it rip right now,” Hurley said the day before the Oklahoma game. “We don’t have this huge pressure of expectations.”
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Perhaps no one showed the steely resolve Connecticut needed Friday more than senior forward Alex Karaban. Karaban, who finished with 13 points and seven rebounds, was called for an offensive foul with 4:11 to go and the Huskies clinging to a one-point lead. Just 31 seconds later, he knocked down a 3-pointer trailing on a fastbreak that gave UConn control over the final minutes.
“I just saw I was wide open,” Karaban said. “I passed one up in the corner, and I should have shot that one too, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I just saw it and just had to let it fly.”
Karaban added a block on Oklahoma’s Jalon Moore with 38 seconds left to help seal the victory and keep Connecticut’s quest moving forward.
The last team to win back-to-back NCAA titles — Florida in 2006 and 2007 — didn’t even make the NCAAs the following year. With no starters back, Billy Donovan’s rebuilt Gators played in the NIT.
The last time a team made the NCAAs with a shot at a three-peat was in 1993, when two-time defending champion Duke earned an at-large bid and a three-seed. But after a first-round win over Southern Illinois, Mike Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils had their season ended by Cal with a second-round upset.
If Connecticut loses Sunday, it won’t be an upset. The Gators blasted Norfolk State 95-69, doing nothing to change their status as a popular choice to cut down the nets in San Antonio. But Hurley said Friday’s win gives his program some momentum.
“We come into this tournament as back-to-back national champions,” Hurley said. “Obviously for us we’ll get these guys back, and I think they’ll get a lot of confidence from advancing and a lot of energy and a lot of belief. UConn and myself getting out of the first round of the tournament, once we get out of the first round, we’ve been pretty good.”
