When the two cousins finishing up Division 1 careers this season aren’t even in the conversation about which family member has been most important to basketball, you must be talking about the Hurleys.
Bobby Hurley was definitely the best player. Despite always looking like he had just gotten over pneumonia, he won back-to-back national championships as the starting point guard for Duke’s most famous team, is the NCAA’s all-time assist leader, and played six years in the NBA. His coaching career has been good, not great.
His father Bob didn’t have a playing career, but is one of just three high school coaches in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, having won 26 state championships in 39 years at St. Anthony High School in New Jersey, and is the subject of a memorable book.
Dan Hurley’s playing career at Seton Hall, was good, not great. But he’s been nothing but a success as a coach during stints at Wagner, Rhode Island and UConn, obviously highlighted by last season’s national championship.
If you knew without looking it up that Connecticut has won more national championships in men’s basketball over the last 25 years than any other school, consider yourself an above average fan.
(The list goes UConn five, Duke and North Carolina three, Kansas, Villanova and Florida two each, the Gators back-to-back winners.)
But it’s not like the Huskies have been a consistent juggernaut. After their 2014 championship, they were out of the tournament for five of the next six years, then made first round exits in 2021 and '22.
The last time Connecticut was seeded first, it lost in the Final Four to Michigan State, but the time before that the Huskies won the whole thing.
So, since fully a third of the people filling out brackets this year have UConn pencilled in as the winner, here’s a look at how the Huskies have fared, odds-wise (stats are from SportsOddsHistory.com).
1999 National Championship
Duke entered the tournament the darling of oddsmakers, opening at +160, while the other eventual Final Four teams were UConn at +400 (its first Final Four), Michigan State at +450 and Ohio State at +3300 (12 teams were a better bet than the Buckeyes).
The Huskies, top seed in the West region, posted wins over UTSA, New Mexico, Iowa and Gonzaga to advance to the Final Four at Tropicana Field a slightly better bet, at +350, while Duke coasted through four games in the East region with an average margin of victory of 33 points, and was now -300. The Spartans were +1000 and Ohio State +1200.
Duke and Connecticut both won their semifinal games by six points, and the Blue Devils, riding a 32-game winning streak, came into the championship 9.5-point favorites. But 27 points from Rip Hamilton helped make the Huskies the biggest point spread underdogs ever to win the national championship.
“Connecticut knocked off the Blue Devils, 77-74, earning the school's first NCAA men's basketball championship and relieving Coach Jim Calhoun of the reputation as a great coach who never won a title,” wrote the Washington Post.
2004 National Championship
Duke and UConn were again among the top four odds-wise as the Madness began in ’04, the Blue Devils at +400, along with Stanford, while the Huskies entered at +450, all of them looking up at Kentucky at +350.
But two of the tournament's top seeds made quick exits, with Kentucky and Stanford both losing on the opening weekend. Their expected berths in the Final Four instead went to Oklahoma State and Georgia Tech, who arrived at the Alamodome at +250 and +800 respectively, their semifinal matchup guaranteeing someone out of the ordinary in the championship.
The other semi had Connecticut (+140) edge out Duke (+160) 79-78, as three Blue Devils centers fouled out trying to guard Emeka Okafor.
Connecticut handled the Yellow Jackets 82-73 in the final, with Okafor scoring 24 points to be named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament as coach Jim Calhoun won his second national title.
2011 National Championship
You’ll never guess which school was one of the betting favorites entering the 2011 tournament. You guessed Duke? Good for you. The defending champion Blue Devils were +450, though there were injury concerns about Kyrie Irving.
Ohio State was +350 and the overall top seed, but had North Carolina, Kentucky and Syracuse in their region. Kansas was +450 and Pittsburgh +800. Fifteen teams were considered better bets than UConn, which opened at +3500.
But for the first time in five years, none of the top seeds made it to the Final Four, and for the first time ever, neither a one or a two seed made it. The Sweet Sixteen included teams like VCU, Richmond and BYU.
Connecticut won four games by an average of 12 points to get to the Final Four, where it was a two-point underdog to Kentucky, but won 56-55. In the other semi, Butler was a 3.5-point favorite over VCU and won 70-62.
The Huskies were three-point favorites over Butler, in the national final for the second year in a row, and UConn held the Bulldogs to the fewest points in a championship game since 1949, the final score 53–41.
Butler led at halftime 22–19, and on CBS, analyst Greg Athony said, “This is the worst half of basketball I've ever seen in a national championship game.”
2014 National Championship
A wager on a team that finished the regular season with a 33-point loss and entered the tournament at +10000 seemed at the time like a great way to set fire to money. But UConn beat betting favorites four straight times to get to the final, the first seven seed to get there.
Of 11 million brackets filled out on ESPN.com, just over one per cent picked Connecticut to get to the Final Four.
“A lot of people were saying that it was going to destroy us, but our team thought it prompted us to get better,” Huskies coach Kevin Ollie said about the 81-48 loss to Louisville in early March.
UConn was a six-and-a-half-point dog going into a semifinal against Florida but won 63-53 to go to the national final against Kentucky, which was the first team to start five freshmen at the Final Four since the 1991–92 Michigan Wolverines.
As Odds Shark said at the time, while predicting a one-point win for the two-and-a-half-point underdog UConn, “the Huskies are a perfect 5-0 SU and ATS in this year's tournament and are 10-2 ATS over their last 12 tournament games overall.”
Connecticut won by six, 60-54.
2023 National Championship
After a first-round tournament exit the previous year, Dan Hurley had nine players depart by graduation or transfer, and Connecticut began play in November at +8000, but improved to +1600 a month later.
That was basically how oddsmakers saw them all during a 31-8 season, until the Sweet 16, by which time all the blue bloods had fallen by the wayside.
When the Final Four teams assembled in Houston, the Huskies were the clear championship favorites at -125, while San Diego State was +400, Miami +475 and Florida Atlantic +625.
If ever a team cruised to a title, it was last year’s UConn. In six tournament victories, its average margin of victory was exactly 20 points, and its closest game was a 13-point win.
