Why UConn Will Repeat As National Champions

Last season, UConn was the best team in the nation. This year, they'll do it again.

Two years ago, UConn's Era of Prosperity looked like it was wrapping up.

Just a year before, greatness had touched the program in the form of a six-overtime loss at the hands of Syracuse in the Big East Tournament and a run to the Final Four sparked by their undisciplined young rookie, Kemba Walker.

The Huskies were hit hard by the departure of seniors Jeff Adrien, Craig Austrie, A.J. Price and Hasheem Thabeet's decision to enter the NBA after his junior year. The 2009-2010 team struggled mightily with consistency. Led by the enigmatic Stanley Robinson and Jerome Dyson, who could play like Patrick Ewing one night and Patrick Ewing, Jr. another, the Huskies fell off the map. Jim Calhoun was forced to take a month-long medical leave for a "serious" undisclosed issue in January, only to return to a brutally ineffective team.

Post-World Cup Blues: How Being A Spain Fan Changed A Yankee Fan's View On The Red Sox

Iker Casillas and Spain celebrate winning the World Cup.
C/O The Guardian

I’ve always been one to get emotionally involved with my sports teams: I was in middle school in 2001—only a few months after 9/11—when my beloved Yankees lost the World Series to the Diamondbacks. I wept for hours after Luis Gonzalez’s bloop single, and I was sullen for days. In 2003, Real Madrid was narrowly edged out of the Champions League by a probably-paying-the-ref-but-shh-I-don’t-wanna-lose-my-job Juventus; I cried like a baby.

But the fact is, I’ve been lucky with my favorite teams: since 1995, I’ve celebrated at least one championship in every sport except basketball, and gotten two in most of the other ones (Real Madrid, Spain, Packers, and the aforementioned evil Yankees). Maybe this luck, and the accompanying crushing weight of high expectations, is the reason I react so badly to watching my teams lose.

You wouldn’t expect someone with my track record—that’s a lot of winning teams, and no, I’m not apologizing—to feel any empathy for (dare I say it) Red Sox fans. Simply supporting a team that seems hell-bent on crushing your dreams—for me, pre-2010 Spain, for Sox fans, pre-2004)—doesn’t necessarily make you feel for anyone else in a similar plight. In fact, it comes with this circle-the-wagons, you-don’t-get-it-man mentality: no other fans can understand that feeling of inevitability that comes with watching your cursed team.

Tiger's Blood: Can He Regain Momentum?

Tiger Woods laughs it up with his new caddy, Joe LaCava.

Talk all you want about Rory McElroy. Keep telling yourself that golf is ushering in a new era. The talking heads continue their semi-hopeful babble about the bright new future of the sport. The fact remains: golf's best shot at regaining its former glory is for its fallen leader to reclaim the throne he vacated on a chilly November night in Orlando two years ago.

Tiger Woods has consistently been in the headlines for the last two years, even while injured. Out for the last two months due to a knee injury, Woods is set to make his much-anticipated return to the PGA Tour.