Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 22, 1990 TAG: 9003221782
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Brill
DATELINE: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. LENGTH: Medium
O'Neill was on the front page of all Connecticut newspapers Wednesday when the governor of the nation's most affluent state announced he would not seek a third term.
Even bowing out, O'Neill wanted some attention. He knew, said a Hartford sportswriter, that if he had waited 24 hours, he no longer would be the lead story on the nightly news.
O'Neill knew better than to compete for reader/viewer interest with the Connecticut Huskies basketball team.
What we're talking about here is a state gone bonkers over a basketball team.
A year ago, officials at the Meadowlands complex, where the NCAA East is being played again, thought the ticket crush for Duke and Georgetown was unbelievable.
Compared to ticket demand for UConn's regional semifinal tonight with Clemson, that was nothing.
UConn may not be the best basketball team in the nation - although at 30-5 and rated No. 3 it trails only Nevada-Las Vegas in victories and in the polls among the teams left in the NCAA Tournament - but it surely is the most heavily reported upon by the media.
When second-year coach Jim Calhoun and guards Tate George and Chris Smith left a pretournament news conference Wednesday, the interview area suddenly was half-empty.
The UConns were pursued by their traveling circus, writers from 35 newspapers and every TV station in the state.
By tonight at 7:40, when the Huskies play Clemson, O'Neill's name will be a distant memory.
Connecticut has some four million residents, many of them suburbanites who commute to New York to work.
But, other than the Whalers, the Hartford hockey team that has adopted mediocrity as its middle name, there is no professional team in the state.
The Boston Celtics play occasional games in Hartford, and there is no football or baseball team.
And, until now, there hadn't been a college basketball powerhouse.
UConn isn't a stranger to the NCAA. This is its 14th appearance, although most have been one game and out.
But, until this season, the biggest thing ever to happen to the Huskies was winning the 1988 NIT (after going 15-14 during the regular season).
The best season was in 1965, when the Huskies were 23-2 in the regular season, then lost in an NCAA Tournament opener.
That team was coached by Fred Shabel, a Duke grad, and the previous year, UConn had been destroyed by the Blue Devils 101-54 in the NCAA East final. Duke, also in the field here, has had few down years since then, but UConn had virtually disappeared until the birth of the Big East.
Even then, UConn was mostly fodder for Georgetown, Syracuse and St. John's.
Little was expected of the Huskies this season. They played Maryland in the eighth-place game in the ACC/Big East challenge. The 87-65 victory should have sent some messages.
Now, having arrived at the Brendan Byrne Arena via two Hartford Civic Center blowouts, Connecticut is finally receiving some attention outside its own area.
"I don't know about Ball State and Loyola [Marymount]," Calhoun said. "But in 72 hours [in the Big East Tournament], we beat Seton Hall, Georgetown and Syracuse. I don't know if Cinderella exists in Connecticut."
What does exist are 85,000 alumni within an hour's drive of the Storrs campus, and a genuine passion for Calhoun's team.
The Hartford writer said he could understand why Duke supporters might not be overwhelmed with emotion, "because they do this every year. They've been to the Final Four three times [in four years].
"This basketball team is the biggest thing [athletically] ever to happen in Connecticut. It is impossible to write too much about the Huskies. When they beat Georgetown and Syracuse back-to-back, we could have written 100 stories and the readers would have read every single word."
It is, said the writer, "a genuine happening."
Quite simply, this has been a year of years for UConn.
The school got its on-campus arena in January and lost its president, to Virginia, in March. John Casteen will take over at UVa on Aug. 1.
He will be here tonight as one of Connecticut's staunchest fans. He'll make a habit of cheering against Clemson, which is UVa's biggest obstacle in ACC football.
However, that is another time and another sport.
Right now, the only story in the state is Huskies basketball. Just ask Gov. O'Neill.
by CNB