Originally Posted by NY Times
Connecticut: The Little State That Could
By BILL PENNINGTON
STORRS, Conn., March 31 — The road to the University of Connecticut is narrow and remote. Past Pumpkin Paul's farm stand and Kathy John's ice cream parlor and ascending a steep hill, there is a highway sign that reads: "University Campus Ahead."
But the first thing you see coming over the rise into the UConn valley campus is a red barn and silo, a large cow field and some low-slung buildings that resemble chicken coops.
This is the road to the Final Four?
It is this year. And it has been seven other times in the nine years preceding this one.
Connecticut's men's and women's basketball teams are in this season's N.C.A.A. tournament semifinals, only the fifth time that one institution has placed two teams in both Final Fours in the same year. It will be the second Final Four appearance for the men, who won the championship in 1999. It will be the eighth Final Four for the UConn women, who have won four N.C.A.A. titles. It is the first time both UConn programs have made the Final Four in the same season.
More remarkable is where UConn has come from to achieve a standing among the perennial national basketball powers of the land. It is not just the journey from Storrs, the distant campus hamlet in northeastern Connecticut without a movie theater, clothes store or McDonald's; it is the ascent from college sports oblivion.
Fifteen years ago, the UConn men's and women's basketball teams had combined to win four N.C.A.A. games in the history of the two tournaments. Since then, they have won 81. Fifteen years ago, neither the men's nor the women's teams had won a Big East championship. They now have the most championships in conference history, for men or women.
The success is not limited to basketball. UConn won the 2000 N.C.A.A. men's soccer title. The women's field hockey team has two national championships. The women's soccer team lost in the N.C.A.A. finals this season and has gone to the N.C.A.A. tournament for 22 consecutive years. Four years ago, UConn became the first university to try to elevate its football team from Division I-AA to a I-A Bowl Championship Series conference. Last year, as an independent, the team had a 9-3 record, and it will play a Big East schedule in the next season.
Not bad for the state university of a state with only 3.4 million people.
"I call it the miracle at Storrs," said Dee Rowe, a UConn basketball coach in the 1970's who has remained a part of the school's athletic administration for 35 years. "I remember when being the best team in New England seemed like our wildest dream. These guys have taken us to the promised land. I'm still amazed and I watched it happen."
The guys Rowe refers to are the women's coach, Geno Auriemma; and the men's coach, Jim Calhoun, who were hired nine months apart in 1985 and 1986. Even though the reasons behind Connecticut's wide-ranging athletic achievements are multifaceted — a blend of abundant financial support by the state government, a fanatical statewide following and prudent marketing — the linchpins to the UConn success story are Auriemma and Calhoun.
When Auriemma arrived at UConn, his team played in an antiquated, on-campus field house with a leaky roof. It is also where the team practiced, with stray balls from nearby intramural basketball games occasionally interrupting his team's workouts. Auriemma could complain about the intrusions, but the intramural games drew crowds roughly as large as those at his games.
Calhoun inherited a team coming off four successive losing seasons. As early as the 1940's, UConn men's basketball had a loyal fan base in the state, and sold-out crowds filled the new Hartford Civic Center 30 years later. But apathy had set in by the mid-1980's, and when Calhoun's first UConn team won just nine games, the home gym was sometimes only half full.
But the conditions for a dynamic national program, for the men and the women, had been in Connecticut for years. The only charter member of the Big East Conference in 1979 that was also a state university, UConn had always been viewed as a sleeping giant in Eastern basketball.
Auriemma and Calhoun could not move UConn out of Storrs, but they figured out ways to put a new face on the place and bring players to the campus. It helped that in 1990, with $22 million in state funding and an additional $7 million in private donations, UConn built Gampel Pavilion, a 10,000-seat, on-campus arena. It was the first new athletic facility on the UConn campus in 27 years.
UConn looked more big time right away, especially for the women's team, which began drawing a family-friendly crowd — lots of kids and grandparents — to its games in the homey, cozy Storrs arena.
Next, led by the former athletic director Lew Perkins and his assistant Jeff Hathaway, who is now UConn's athletic director, Connecticut shrewdly used the all-seeing eye of television to sell itself. For the men, the Big East Conference had an expansive national TV contract, and it guaranteed an unusual amount of coast-to-coast exposure, especially on Connecticut-based ESPN.
Calhoun honed a living room pitch to the parents of recruits, stressing UConn's marriage with national TV. The coach assured parents they would be able to watch their sons play all the time, and soon Calhoun's recruiting had a national scope that placed UConn above the usual infighting for talent along the Northeast corridor.
Meanwhile, UConn talked Connecticut public television into airing a few women's games live. The games are now Connecticut's runaway television hit. The public network broadcast 22 UConn women's games live this season.
It did not hurt, either, that the state's only professional sports franchise, the N.H.L.'s Hartford Whalers, deserted Connecticut for North Carolina in the 1990's.
"We are the only game in town and the town is the borders of the state," said Tim Tolokan, a UConn associate athletic director.
All of this attention made the Huskies feel something other than small time. Players liked the spotlight, which lured even more high-profile players. The victories followed.
Calhoun's second team won the National Invitation Tournament. His fourth lost in the N.C.A.A. tournament regional final. The women's team went to the Final Four in 1991 and won its first national championship with a 35-0 record in 1995 behind Rebecca Lobo. That same year, the men lost in the regional finals to the eventual national champion, U.C.L.A.
Three weeks after the 1995 N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, a billion-dollar aid package aimed at renovating the Connecticut campus was passed by the Legislature.
"Rebecca Lobo came to the Capitol for the vote," said Tom Ritter, who was Connecticut's speaker of the state house at the time and sponsor of the UConn legislation. "It was a love fest. People who were not for the bill were now for it. Governor Rowland, who originally wasn't for it, wanted to come down and show his support."
New buildings, dormitories, laboratories, classrooms and athletic facilities began springing up around the campus. Three years ago, the state agreed to build a $91 million football stadium for UConn in East Hartford. Last year, four national championships in basketball later, the state Legislature approved another capital-improvements program for UConn.
UConn athletics is now a phenomenon beyond Connecticut. Its logo merchandise is among the top sellers nationwide, the women's program is a dynasty and Calhoun's program, which has already put 14 players in the N.B.A., will most likely place two more there soon in Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon.
"The result is that this is no longer a regional school, it's a national school," Rowe said.
Some think Storrs has become a selling point in recruiting.
"We've heard that parents like the fact that it's in a rural setting," Ritter said. "There are fewer of the detrimental influences there might be in urban settings."
The UConn campus and Connecticut at large seemed awash this week in Huskymania, the teams' excited following awaiting what could be a historic weekend. No Division I university has ever won both the men's and women's N.C.A.A. basketball championships in the same season.
It may be a welcome diversion from the other continuing news in the state, the federal investigation of Rowland, who also faces an impeachment inquiry. Ritter, now a member of the UConn board of trustees, was less sure of a connection.
"People view one as politics," Ritter said of Rowland's plight. "UConn basketball is a religion. It's not good to mix the two."
