What’s in Storrs: How UConn Became a Basketball Powerhouse

A small town in the Nutmeg State seems an unlikely home for not one but two dominant programs. But the Huskies are thriving because of, not in spite of, their sleepy setting.

Photo illustration by The Sporting Press with the photo credits as Manny Millan (Okafor, Taurasi); David E. Klutho (Hamilton, Stewart); John Biever (Calhoun, Moore); Bob Rosato (Walker); Robert Beck (Brid); Al Tielemans (Team Celebration); Jamie Squire/Getty Images (Hurley, Cheerleaders); Elsa/Getty Images (Auriemma, Cheerleanders); Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images (Lobo); Brian Murphy/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images (Bueckers); Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust (Husky); / Andrew Harnik/Getty Images (trophy);Chris Coduto/Getty Images (fans); Rob Carr/Getty images (cheerleaders with signs); David Butler II/Imagn Images (Karaban)

HELLO, AND thank you for your interest in Connecticut basketball! We hope you enjoy your trip to Storrs, a town that proves that even in a tiny, densely populated state, you can be in the middle of nowhere. Before your official visit, please note:

On your way into the town of Storrs, you will pass through an intersection known as the Four Corners, which was named because—here is a bit of campus lore—it has four corners. Yes, so do most intersections. But ours also has a combination Dunkin’/pizza joint/gas station. Yes, so do most intersections in New England. But ours also has a Dick’s (Auto Care, not Sporting Goods) as well as … um …

Anyway: All the greenery serves as camouflage, but we trust you’ll find our campus eventually. It is truly quite lovely. Please allow yourself a moment to picture a young Geno Auriemma arriving here 40 years ago for his first head coaching job, ready to build one of the great dynasties in sports history. You can almost hear his pitch to prospects …

“We’re not in a recruiting area where a lot of players are growing up,” Auriemma said recently. “We are not in a major city or major community, so to speak. We didn’t have a great arena on campus. The university itself was a commuter school, pretty much. I can’t think of any positives that there would have been, 40 years ago, to come to school here.” 

Ah, well, that was then. This is now, according to our men’s coach, Dan Hurley:

“You’re not going to get seduced by the weather or major city or the geography.”

Alex Karaban and Paige Bueckers will each have their teams contending. / Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated

Moving right along: While you are here, you might want to attend a tailgate at our beautiful on-campus football stadium. Great idea! But we don’t have an on-campus football stadium.

To understand how unusual that is: In the last 34 years, 23 schools have won at least one men’s or women’s basketball championship. Twentyone of them have on-campus football stadiums. The exceptions are UCLA, which plays in the Rose Bowl, and UConn, which does not play in the Rose Bowl. Even Villanova’s football team, which competes in the FCS, has a campus stadium. Ours plays in East Hartford, 25 miles west of campus, which saves us the trouble of asking 25,000 people to turn right at the Four Corners stoplight to get to a game.

What we have in abundance here at UConn is banners. Since 1995, our women have won 11 national championships, while our men have won six—as many as Duke and North Carolina combined.

You might wonder: How did this tiny, unglamorous outpost become the self-proclaimed Basketball Capital of the World?

It seems like a mystery, but it’s more of a riddle: The answer lies in the question.

“No one,” Hurley says, “picks UConn for the wrong reasons.”

The November 2003 issue of Sports Illustrated featured both UConn programs represented by Diana Taurasi and Emeka Okafor. / Jeffery A. Salter/Sports Illustrated

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HEY, YOU made it! Good. Now pull up a chair. We’re going to tell you a story about the old days. But only one, we promise. This isn’t Kentucky.

When Auriemma took the UConn job in 1985 and saw that he had so little to sell, he had a realization: UConn’s apparent shortcomings served as a recruiting filter. Players who wanted glitz or sunshine or a storied basketball arena chose other schools, while, as he recalls, “we got kids that didn’t care about any of that.” The same thing was happening with the men’s program under Jim Calhoun. Whether you were a man or a woman, the main reason to choose UConn back then was because you wanted to play basketball for the Huskies’ coach.

It is still the main reason. Since 1995, when the UConn women went unbeaten and won their first national title, Auriemma has had access to as much talent as any program in the country. But that can be a trap. Plenty of coaches have stockpiled elite recruits with the belief they could shoehorn anybody into their culture, only to find, as Auriemma says, that “you take all the best, then you realize all the best, they’re not all the best pieces.” He started out recruiting scrappers other schools didn’t want. Since ’95, he has recruited scrappers everybody else did want.

“Breanna Stewart is exactly like Rebecca Lobo,” Auriemma says. “Not as a player. But cut her open, and you’ve got the exact same thing inside both of those people. Paige Bueckers is exactly like Diana Taurasi: Cut them open, they’re exactly the same person. Tina Charles was exactly like Stefanie Dolson. Different style of play, different backgrounds, whatever you want to call it … [but] here?”

He taps his hand on his chest. “Exactly the same. So when people say, ‘How do you go and maintain it?’ You’re getting the same kid over and over and over again.” 

Like most Huskies, Karaban is not a one-and-done player. He returned to UConn after averaging 13.3 points per game for the 2024 champs. / Barry Chin/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

It is a formula Hurley is applying now, after having won the last two national titles. 

“Every player in the country wants us to recruit them now,” he says. “That doesn’t mean that every one of them wants to come here or believes in the way that we do it.” 

The way that they do it is many things: creative, intelligent, educational. But mostly it is hard. 

Come watch for yourself. 

We insist. 

No, really: We insist.

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SOME PROGRAMS recruit with sugar and coach with salt. Here at UConn, we prefer to sell you the salt up front. It’s more efficient.

“We purposely don’t try to fool anyone into coming here,” Hurley says. “I don’t have a great comfort level with a kid unless they’ve seen us practice a couple of times. You come and you watch us practice on an official visit, you see how hard we go. You’ve got to make a decision on whether you want to be in an environment like this. It attracts serious people—people that are serious about basketball.”

The NCAA regulates how much teams can practice, but not how hard. Hurley gets four hours a week in the summer, and every minute is as intense as any in-season session.

UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley celebrates after winning the 2024 national championship. / Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos/Getty Images

You might notice that he does not give his team water breaks. Water, sure. But not breaks. Managers run bottles out to players during drills. He also does not pause so players can practice free throws, or to blowtorch their effort. He says, “I think the longest I’ve stopped the practice since I’ve been in Connecticut is maybe 20 seconds—maybe 25.” He might gather them for a collective scolding when they’re done, but during practice, it’s go, go, go.

It’s also teach, teach, teach. Auriemma, who spends the first 45 minutes of his practices on fundamentals, says—with admiration—that Hurley “coaches them like they’re in junior high. He teaches them, like, ‘This is how you dribble a basketball.’ That’s why they’re so f---ing good. He takes high-level talent and coaches the absolute s--- out of them.”

You might think you’re the greatest player in the country, on your way to a long pro career, and you don’t need some coach showing you how to dribble. You might even be right. Good for you! Go somewhere else. “I’m a high school coach by trade,” Hurley says. “I think that players have become more versatile, but in the end, it comes down to catching with two hands and finishing strong and being smart and a good passer.” 

Hurley looks like an uncaged beast during games: berating refs, even getting into it with opposing fans. But for the most part, he is screaming on behalf of his players, not at them. “I’m [like] the boxing trainer—I’m the hype man for my players,” he says. “If I’m yelling at my team on game night and yelling at players for shot selection and turning the ball over and different things, then I’m a s----y coach. I had ample time for that.”

Most women who choose UConn are making the most obvious choice, because no school has won more. But it’s also the most challenging: They are, essentially, asking the famously demanding Auriemma to push them with no guarantee  they will ever crack the lineup. Auriemma compares them to grads pursuing an acting career. One might say, “I’m going to Omaha, Nebraska. I want to be a stage actress.” His response: “Really? O.K. The other kid says, ‘I’m moving to New York, and I’m gonna try to make it on Broadway.’ ‘Holy s---. Are you kidding me? You know how hard that’s gonna be? You know what you’re gonna have to go through? You know how much easier [it] would be someplace else?’ ‘Yeah, but it wouldn’t be Broadway.’ ”

South Carolina has won three titles since UConn last won one. But one could still argue that, in the women’s game, the way you get to Broadway is by turning right at the Four Corners.

“We have to fit them, and they have to fit us, and they have to want what we already have,” Auriemma says. “That’s what I realized: I can’t make you what you are not capable of being, regardless of how good you are. And those kids went to other schools and they beat our ass. So that’s fine, because they fit that school that they went to perfectly.”

This season, Auriemma plans to co-opt a slogan from the NBA champion Celtics: Different here.

“It doesn’t connote It’s better here. It’s special here. We’re better than you are. We’re preordained to be better than you are,” Auriemma says. “None of that s---. We haven’t won a national championship since 2016. That means [seven] other teams have. So there’s lots of ways that you can win, and there’s lots of great places out there to win [at]. It’s just different here.”

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“WHAT ABOUT NIL?” you say. We’re so glad you asked!

You’ll have plenty of opportunities here. Bueckers was the first college athlete to sign a Gatorade deal. She and Alex Karaban both signed with Dunkin’.

So yes: You can make a lot of money playing for UConn. But if that’s why you want to come here, we have two words for you:

See ya. 

“We don’t want NIL to be the driver,” Hurley says. 

Hurley adds that he does not want to lose a recruit over NIL, either. But he has seen what has happened when players only care about grabbing the biggest bag: “You’re a mercenary. Maybe it’s not the place you really, in your heart, wanted to go. That’s a tough way to build a champion.” 

Geographically or athletically, Storrs is not a place you pass through. You come here to win. We even have a special committee of people to remind you of this, a group that we refer to as “everybody.”

Huskies fans are intense. The local media can be relentless. The one constant since the 1980s is that people don’t really aspire to have the flashiest team in the country. It’s fine if they do. But they had better win while they’re doing it.

“They demand that we not just put players in the NBA, but are playing championship-level basketball and put players in the NBA,” Hurley says. “It really forces us as a coaching staff to recruit winners and pass on recruiting some talented players [who] may just use the program for 10 months, become a draft pick and not fight too hard to win for UConn.”

The standard for Auriemma’s team is unlike anything else in American sports. 

“There’s a shock when we lose,” he says. “Last year, we were 4–3 before Christmas. All the stats start coming out, all the obscure stuff. You know, The last time UConn women’s basketball lost more than one game before Christmas was 37 years—whatever the hell the case may be.”

With Bueckers, Auriemma has an elite backcourt talented enough to end his seven-season national title drought. / Steph Chambers/Getty Images

There is a purity of basketball purpose in Storrs that you will not find anywhere else. Sure, people say basketball is the dominant sport on Tobacco Road, and it often feels that way. But North Carolina pays football coach Mack Brown almost twice as much as it pays men’s basketball coach Hubert Davis, and for good reason: In college sports, football causes earthquakes, and every other sport must survive them. Duke-Stanford is now an ACC matchup because football blew up the Pac-12. Arizona has put forth four decades of men’s basketball excellence, but when the Big Ten expanded to the West, it chose football schools.

Auriemma and Hurley both make more money than UConn football coach Jim Mora Jr. Hurley says, “We don’t want our conference to be the driver,” and it isn’t. Huskies basketball is essentially realignment-proof: UConn bounced from the Big East to the American Athletic Conference, won national titles in men’s and women’s hoops, and then bounced back to the Big East and kept making Final Fours. 

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WELL, YOUR visit is almost over. You’re probably tired. Hey, UConn hoops has that effect on people. After a few hours at the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, you might want a little rest and relaxation. No problem! Just leave. 

The key to the Werth Center, like the magic of Storrs, is what it doesn’t have. 

“There’s no sauna,” Auriemma says. “I mean, there’s no beach volleyball s--- over here. There’s no, you know, 15 pool tables and Ping-Pong machines, or whatever they’re called—pinball machines. No. This is a place where you come to work.” 

The Werth Center opened in 2014. Hurley arrived four years later. (“When I got here, it actually looked like a brand-new home with no furniture in it.”) He revamped the weight room and improved players’ nutrition. But he didn’t install any beach volleyball s--- or, um, Ping-Pong machines. In a recruiting world that is full of gold bells and platinum whistles, Auriemma says: “You want to get your hair done? Go to a hair salon.”

There are two reasons to turn a practice facility into an upscale resort. One is to impress recruits. But neither Hurley nor Auriemma want recruits who would be impressed by pool tables. The other reason is to keep players under the coach’s thumb. They don’t want that, either.

“I would hope that, after four years, you will have experienced the University of Connecticut,” Auriemma says. “How do you do that if you spend 12 hours a day in here? I think you can have more influence on your players when you give them more freedom.”

Azzi Fudd will pair with Bueckers to create a formidable backcourt. / David Butler II/IMAGN

The men’s and women’s teams each have their own courts at the Werth Center. That way, they can practice whenever they like. But they share a dining room, an academic center and a weight room. This makes sense economically—15-person teams do not need their own dining rooms—but also athletically.

The women feel as important as the men. The men understand they are not more important than the women. They are all forced to socialize with the students who are most likely to understand that, as Hurley says, “playing basketball here is an intense experience.” When fall basketball practice begins, the UConn men and women hold a Midnight Madness event together, and when the season starts, they attend each other’s games. Auriemma says of the men: “They’re basketball junkies.” So are his players. The culture of each program reinforces the other’s.

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AS YOUR visit comes to an end, we have two tests for you. 

The first is a simple pop quiz. Ready? 

Name the only two schools to win national titles in men’s and women’s basketball in the same year. 

That’s right: UConn and UConn. 

Now, a tougher one: In the past quarter century, what percentage of NCAA basketball championships has UConn won? 

The answer: 32%. 

O.K., that’s the end of one test. 

The other test started when you got here.

Every player and coach in the program was evaluating you. A lot of players are good enough to play for UConn, but not as many belong here. Hurley estimates that between 10% and 15% of the time, after a player visits, he stops recruiting him.

If you are in that 10% to 15%, don’t take offense. Most people aren’t made for this place. Fifth-year senior Bueckers is. Redshirt junior Karaban is. Auriemma and Hurley are.

Auriemma is the 70-year-old son of Italian immigrants, and Hurley is the 51-year-old son of a legendary American high school basketball coach.

But cut them open, and they’re exactly the same inside.

That is probably why they get along so well. They have the same passion for the game and the same ability to slice through the nonsense. 

Auriemma (right) has been in Storrs for nearly four decades, while Hurley grew up the son of a New Jersey high school coaching legend. / Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Here is one more story for you before you go.

Early in the 2022–23 season, with three minutes left and his team up by 40 points against Delaware State, Hurley started getting on one of the refs. He knew he’d see the ref again during the Big East season, and he wanted to plant a seed. The ref T’d him up. After the game, the two teams flew out to Portland for the Phil Knight Invitational. Hurley sat next to Auriemma on the plane and asked what he thought.

“He was like, ‘That was low level. Why would you act like that? It was a total a--hole thing,’ ” Hurley says.

Auriemma had already told Hurley he thought he had a special squad. But unnecessary histrionics were not going to help. Hurley says, “I agreed with Geno … until about January. Then I started melting down again.” This time, Hurley’s wife and agent both talked some sense into him. The UConn men went on to win the national title, and then another last season.

Hurley says, “I was way more insecure then than I am now. I have a different level of confidence as a coach.” It is unlikely that any men’s or women’s coach will ever approach Auriemma’s 11 titles. But Hurley’s two champions played a lot like Auriemma’s best teams: overprepared and unshakeable.

It’s different here. Not better. Not magical. Just different. As you drive away, look around. Storrs does not seem like the kind of place that produces champion after champion. And that is why it does.