Jim Calhoun Needed This Team

No, it wasn’t the first. Nor did it carry the confirmation of the second. 

But Monday night’s title for Jim Calhoun may still have been the sweetest.

I was struck by one thing more than any other during this season and during the all-time great run the Huskies went on through the last 11 games of the season. Not Kemba Walker, not Jeremy Lamb or the stifling man-to-man defense that limited a team to 18.8 percent shooting in a national championship game. No, I noticed one thing more than any of those things.

Jim Calhoun was smiling. 

It’s no secret that Calhoun isn’t exactly Mr. Sunshine and Rainbows. You could call him gruff. Maybe disciplined. Even angry. No one would confuse him for the professorial Brad Stevens or bombastic John Calipari. I’ve been around a decent number of presumed intimidating presences (athletes, coaches, media members, etc.), but the only person whose stare actually made me nervous was Calhoun’s.

This year’s championship run was a little different. When interviewed at halftime of various postseason games in both the Big East and national tournaments he actually was polite and well-reasoned in his responses. He chuckled. He was appropriately self-deprecating at times.

Sure, all reports were he was just as hard in practice as usual and he apparently lit into his team at halftime of the championship, but maybe he was enjoying himself more than he ever had before.

Following the game, the first thing Calhoun said at the press conference wasn’t about how the game was played or how happy he was to win a title. It wasn’t about a specific play or the defense. It wasn’t about the slugfest of a game it turned out to be.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have some great teams at UConn, were enough to win a couple tournaments,” Calhoun said. “Very honestly, this group to me will always be incredibly special. They’re all special in their own way, but I needed this team.”

It was only after those comments that Calhoun moved on to discussing the game. He also discussed last year’s team, almost all of which was overhauled for this championship run.

Gone were the underachievers like Jerome Dyson and Stanley Robinson. And looking back a few more years, gone was the talented squad that (quite honestly) choked against George Mason in 2006. There were two cycles of players in between these 2011 champions and the 2004 title.

Not since the 2004 team have I liked a group of players as much I did this year’s team. And no, it has nothing to do with the result. From the opening games of this season there was an instant attraction to the freshmen, specifically Jeremy Lamb and Shabazz Napier. Sure, every UConn fan rooted for Marcus Williams, Hasheem Thabeet and Stanley Robinson. We wanted them to do well. But I never had an emotional attachment to those guys.

Jim Calhoun would certainly never admit that he felt the same way, but I think there was a sense of frustration with those teams that produced a perfect cleansing with this team. All the baggage of those teams – the stolen laptops, the loss to George Mason, wholesale transfers and suspensions for Dyson and Robinson – was gone and in its place was the magnificent energy of Kemba Walker and a bunch of young players who didn’t know how not to work hard.

Calhoun said it succinctly himself on Monday night: “It may be the happiest moment of my life.”