{"id":197147,"date":"2023-04-04T07:40:20","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T11:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=197147"},"modified":"2025-03-18T16:02:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T20:02:19","slug":"uconn-vs-the-world-uconn-5-world-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/04\/uconn-vs-the-world-uconn-5-world-0\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Men Win Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ll take five.<\/p>\n

Five years after Dan Hurley arrived as head coach, the UConn Huskies men\u2019s basketball team won the program\u2019s fifth NCAA national championship in Houston on Monday night, overcoming a tough, persistent San Diego State University team to win 76-59.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had the four national championships coming in,\u201d Hurley said moments after the game. \u201cWe\u2019ve been striving for number five, and now we got our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Welcome Home rally for the team is scheduled to be held today at Gampel Pavilion, with doors opening at 4 p.m. and the team expected to arrive around 5 p.m. Students, faculty, staff, and fans who want to attend need to obtain a free ticket by visiting UConnHuskies.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Storrs on Monday night, a capacity crowd celebrated at Gampel Pavilion, rushing the floor with a minute left in the game. They were joined by students at impromptu gatherings around the University, as well as alumni and fans across the length and breadth of UConn Nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive national titles since 1999,\u201d wrote Meghan Bard \u201903 (CLAS) on Twitter. \u201cI don\u2019t care what you call UConn, but none of your blue bloods have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program’s first national championship since 2014 came after years of frustration, including two first-round exits from the NCAA tournament in 2021 and 2022. But this season, Hurley\u2019s team played like they had something to prove, winning every single game \u2013 by double-digit margins – against opponents from outside the Big East conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey buried us before the season, and then they buried us in the mid-point,\u201d Hurley said after the game. \u201cWe had the chip on our shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team maintained that motivation during the entirety of a tournament that included everything from the constant courtside presence of Bill Murray to a last-minute scramble to secure air travel to Houston for resident UConn Good Boy Jonathan XIV, winning their games by an average of 20 points.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told everyone this is a special team,\u201d said junior forward Adama Sanogo, whose peerless play earned him the 2023 Most Outstanding Player of the Men\u2019s NCAA Tournament award. \u201cYou see now?\u201d<\/p>\n

After congratulating the team on Monday night, Gov. Ned Lamont said a plan for a victory parade in Hartford was in the works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dominant NCAA tournament performance ends with the men’s basketball team bringing championship gold back to Storrs <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":197158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1712,2224,2649,2624,2235,173,92,174,2225,90,2227,2234,2233],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-197147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-cahnr","category-blue-pride","category-blue","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-avery-point","category-uconn-hartford","category-uconn-stamford","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-waterbury","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-university-life","category-university-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 11:30:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197147"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197180,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197147\/revisions\/197180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/197158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197147"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=197147"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=197147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}