NCAA

UConn's Tristen Newton is lifted in the postgame celebrations after the Huskies won the NCAA Tournament final on Monday, April 3. Brynn Anderson/AP.

All of UConn’s titles have come since 1999 with the most recent before Monday occurring in 2014. “We weren’t ranked going into the year so we had the chip on our shoulder,” UConn head coach Dan Hurley told game broadcaster CBS. If it were not for them I would not be here right now,” Sanogo told CBS.

UConn's most recent championship prior to Monday's victory was in 2014, when the Huskies won the NCAA Tournament as a No. 7 seed. Only their first title came as ...

This was Kevin Ollie's second season as coach and the Huskies' first as a member of the [American](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/teams/AMER/american-eagles/) Athletic Conference. [Villanova's](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/teams/NOVA/villanova-wildcats/) 1985 champion was seeded lower. 11 seed [VCU](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/teams/VCU/vcu-rams/) went from the First Four to the Final Four in the first year of the First Four. The Huskies then defeated [Georgia Tech](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/teams/GATECH/georgia-tech-yellow-jackets/) in the final, avenging a loss to the Yellow Jackets earlier in the season. [NBA](/nba/). [NCAA Tournament](/college-basketball/ncaa-tournament/) as a No. 1 team in the AP poll for ten consecutive weeks in the middle of the season before finishing the regular season at No. The Huskies started the regular 14-0, then lost six of their next eight games to start Big East play, but followed that with nine wins out of their next ten before losing in the semifinal of the Big East Tournament. They are only the third team since expansion to win the title without defeating a team seeded higher than third. [UConn](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/teams/UCONN/connecticut-huskies/) won the [2023 NCAA Tournament ](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/ncaa-championship-uconn-wins-fifth-national-title-capping-dominant-march-madness-with-rout-of-san-diego-state/live/)on Monday night, defeating [San Diego State](https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/teams/SDGST/san-diego-state-aztecs/) 76-59. The first of the Huskies championship and still the best team to win one for UConn. No.

UConn is the men's champ after completing one of the most dominant March Madness runs in history. And we're still thinking about the wild women's final ...

(Play was stopped while everybody waited for LSU to shoot a free throw.) Clark spent the last quarter of the game matador-ing away from steal attempts, knowing she couldn’t risk getting disqualified. Czinano was particularly important for Iowa in the paint and represented Iowa’s only hope of going head-to-head with LSU’s powerful post players; Czinano’s backup, Addison O’Grady, played a season-high 18 minutes. You could see the confidence and exuberance returning to her after one of the coldest shooting streaks of her life had exiled her to the bench; that energy flowed through her and into her teammates. All of these people need to watch women’s college basketball, where officials yearn to take over games and force players to adhere to their own personal opinions about how players should behave on the court. Over the course of March Madness, the Iowa guard set the record for the most points in an NCAA tournament, most assists in a women’s NCAA tournament, most 3s in an NCAA tournament, and most taunts in an NCAA tournament, hitting her unfortunate opponents with John Cena’s “You can’t see me” move. She was their most consistent shooter—arguably their only consistent shooter—and peaked when she drilled seven 3s in a game against Florida. There was a brief moment of drama when San Diego State cut the deficit to five points in the second half—I almost thought the Aztecs were going to cover the seven-point spread—but this was UConn’s championship, and it had been clear that it was UConn’s championship to win for most of the past two weeks. But the Aztecs shot worse than 40 percent in three of their six tourney games, and their 32.2 percent on Monday night wasn’t even their worst shooting performance in the past month: They shot 20-for-63 (31.7 percent) in the Mountain West championship game against Utah State. They trailed in the second half of a game only once, and for about 40 seconds, in the entire tournament; their average margin of victory was 20 points. There’s nothing more draining than getting your hopes up every single time a shot goes in the air and watching it clang away. The Huskies’ shining moment was a solid month of squeezing the life out of their opposition. And as a fan of mid-major hoops, I was pulling for them throughout their improbable run to the national championship game.

Here is a complete list of every player to be the Final Four Most Outstanding Player since the first NCAA tournament in 1939. This includes every school and ...

[1973 NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-18/1973-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article). [1993 NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-14/1993-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article). [2005 NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-07/2005-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article). [1952 NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-27/1952-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article) with 141 total points over four games. [NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-15/1945-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article) with 65 points, 22 of which came in the title game against NYU. [1989 NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-12/1989-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article), averaging 30.7 points per game. [1940 NCAA tournament](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2020-05-27/1940-ncaa-tournament-bracket-scores-stats-records?utm_campaign=inline-article). Louisville's Pervis Ellison took home the honor in 1986, just the second freshman to do so at that point — Arnie Ferrin (Utah, 1944). Hogue erupted for 36 points (12-of-18-shooting) and 19 rebounds in the national semifinals against UCLA. In the national semifinals against Kansas, Dixon scored a game-high 33 points (10-of-18 shooting) while adding three rebounds, two assists and two steals. N/A He finished with 20 points (7-of-14 shooting), nine rebounds and four assists in the national semifinals against Villanova.

They dominated throughout the tournament with one of the most impressive runs March Madness history to pick up the program's fifth national men's basketball ...

"But we ran into too good of a team." This was a team built strictly for 2023 - replenished by Hurley, who went to the transfer portal to find more outside shooting after back-to-back first-round exits in the tournament. But a team built on defense finished the game only shooting 32% from the floor. I think there were people in the stands that thought, 'Hey, they're capable of doing it again,' and we were," Dutcher said. "We knew the level that we could play at, even through those dark times." Sanogo averaged 19.7 points and 9.8 rebounds over UConn's six-game cruise through the tournament. 4 for this Final Four full of underdogs, set the stage for this win over an 11:07 stretch in the first half during which the Aztecs didn't make a basket. Be kind," Nantz said as part of his final sign-off from the Final Four. One of the Fab Five, current Wolverines coach Juwan Howard, was there to console his former coach. They won those six games by an average of an even 20 points, only a fraction less than what North Carolina did in sweeping to the title in 2009. But Jordan Hawkins (16 points), - whose cousin, Angel Reese, won MOP honors the night before to help "It's absolutely amazing that we both get this opportunity," Hawkins said.

UConn's 76-59 victory ended a dominant tournament run in which it won every game by double figures.

He said he “sucked” when he first started coaching in high school, and revealed that he had taken up painting at the suggestion of his wife, while acknowledging that he is no Picasso. 9 — to play in the championship game. “We knew we were the best team in the tournament going in, and we just had to play like it.” “It was that March feeling — wow, this is happening,” said Trammell, whose free throw with 1.2 seconds left had beaten Creighton in the South Regional final. After Joey Calcaterra buried a 3-pointer to put Connecticut ahead, 56-41, the Aztecs mustered a final charge. “As a basketball player, if you don’t walk in there and feel inspired by that, I don’t know what’s going to inspire you.” Hurley convened his three cornerstones — Sanogo, Jackson and Hawkins — and promised them he would put a better roster around them, dotted with perimeter shooters who wouldn’t shrink in big moments. Since the last title nine years ago, Kevin Ollie, a former Husky himself, was fired and then filed suit to win back salary, In their march to the national championship, they won their six tournament games by 24, 15, 23, 28, 13 and 17 points. San Diego State, which had never before advanced past the round of 16, was trying to replicate what Kansas did a year ago, rallying from 15 points down in the second half to claim a championship. When the final buzzer sounded, Newton jumped off the edge of the elevated court and into the arms of family members wearing his No. The Huskies walked into soiled hotel rooms when they arrived in Las Vegas for their first games in the N.C.A.A.