For UConn, Big East return is truly a family reunion

Some of UConn's greatest memories, such as 2011 Big East championship above, will be rekindled Wednesday when Huskies’ return to their longtime conference becomes official. (Photo by UConn Athletic Communications)

Martin and Lewis. Carson and McMahon. Abbott and Costello.

Connecticut and the Big East.

Some things just cannot be mentioned without the other, and Wednesday morning, the latter two are once again reunited after a seven-year divorce brought about by football and its tendency to drive the bus in athletic spending. Yet down the long and winding road traveled since 2013, the American Athletic Conference is all but a distant memory now as UConn has given its fans — and on a larger scale, the college basketball world — reason to smile in the form of the Huskies’ return to the Big East stage as the COVID-19 pandemic completes a fourth month of wreaking havoc on the country.

“We’re very excited about it,” assistant coach Tom Moore, now in his second stint at UConn after spending 13 years on Jim Calhoun’s staff before becoming the head coach at Quinnipiac in 2007, said of UConn’s long-awaited homecoming. “I think the coaching staff is more excited about it than our players, because it hasn’t hit the players yet as to what this will mean. I think they’re going to realize it when they start to see the difference in crowds, God willing that we have crowds this year, and of course, the first Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden. I don’t think they’ll realize the enormity of this move until we play a couple of Big East games.”

“They’re going to feel how important this is to our fans, because our fans are going to go crazy about this. Our fans are nuts about this and how excited they are, and how anxious they’ve been for this to happen for such a long time. I’ve talked to so many fans I knew from the first time I was here, that I’ve sort of reconnected with since I’ve been back, and the first thing out of their mouth was, ‘When can we go back to the Big East?’ The guys that are from New York, New Jersey, the DMV, what they don’t realize is there are no pro sports teams in Connecticut. UConn is THE pro sports team. I can’t wait for our guys to experience that. It’s going to be much bigger than they can imagine.”

While UConn’s players are experiencing newfound territory, the coaches guiding them are not. Head coach Dan Hurley played in the Big East at Seton Hall, Moore helped develop all-conference talent the likes of Ray Allen, Richard Hamilton, Caron Butler, Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor during his first tenure in Storrs, Taliek Brown won a national championship in 2004 — and hit an iconic half-court shot in the Big East tournament two years prior, and Kimani Young briefly served on Norm Roberts’ staff at St. John’s in the late 2000s. But for all the experience in the league on the Huskies’ leadership group, the evolution of the conference since the Big East’s reformation in 2013 has made an even stronger impression.

“All of us coaches, when we have an off night, we’re college basketball fans for that night, and it always seemed like there was one or two great Big East games on every night,” said Moore, highlighting the Big East’s television contract with Fox Sports. “They do a really good job, I think, of making the Big East a really well-packaged product. You’re watching that great game on Wednesday, and they’re talking about the doubleheader they have on Saturday. That’s impressive to me, and from a basketball standpoint, the thing that I’ve been impressed with is the schools in the Midwest that they’ve added.”

“They’ve all brought something of value to the league, and that’s why I think it’s one of the best basketball conferences in the country. So even though we lost great programs when the football thing hit, we also gained some really good basketball schools that are more than holding up their end of the bargain.“

Where Butler, Creighton and Xavier have made immediate impacts upon joining the Big East, UConn is positioned to do the same in its second act. Already projected as a top-half team in the league, the Huskies’ mix of veterans and youth, led by potential all-conference guard James Bouknight, is a lethal combination.

“I’m glad we’re doing this in year three rather than year one or year two,” Moore admitted with regard to the conference realignment. “We just feel, internally, much more ready for something like this now than we would have been when we just got here. We just feel like it’s more of our program. From top to bottom, we have a little more of our culture imprinted and stamped on the program. We’re young and old. We’ve got some older players who’ve been around and are going to help us a lot like Josh Carlton, Isaiah Whaley, Tyler Polley, but we have some really exciting young players, too, James Bouknight, Akok Akok, Andre Jackson, R.J. Cole, Jalen Gaffney and Adama Sanogo.”

“We’ve got really talented young guys who are going to have to grow up quick, but I do think — for the first time — we’ve got real quality depth, and we also have a mix of old and young. We have more talent up and down the roster and more balance, but I think it’s going to be eye-opening. It’ll be a real test for both our old and young players.”

As the time draws closer for a return to familiar surroundings, the celebration of reaching the promised land, for the time being, takes on greater precedence, and rightfully so. With the past having been a glorious time to be a UConn fan, and with greater things bound to arrive in the future, there really is no time like the present to usher the Huskies back to the Big East.

“People don’t realize it,” Moore reiterated. “People don’t realize how crazy our fans are. They take over, they all come down on the train and they all skip work. We’re their pro team and it’s their chance to shine. It really is neat. You’ll see guys my age with their fathers, and you’ll see a 50-year-old guy with a 75-year-old father, and they’ll be like, ‘We’ve been going for 30 years! I used to take him when he was a baby!’ It’s just something that sort of bonds Connecticut people.”