UConn will only be a short subway ride away from an arena that the players and fans already feel quite comfortable in when the program begins its national title defense on Friday.
The Huskies earned their first-ever No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday and face No. 16 seed Stetson at Barclays Center after capturing a Big East title on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
UConn’s road back to the national championship game will look a bit different than when it won it all last year as a No. 4 seed out of the West Region.
Not only do the Huskies get to play close to home — a mere 139 miles from their Storrs, Conn., campus — but they’ll begin riding the high of their successful run in the Big East Tournament.
“We definitely feel lighter; I think that the staff and the players do,” Huskies coach Dan Hurley told the Hartford Courant. “It’s heavy to play at UConn, I’m not even sure if it is a benefit to fly under the radar because if you’re in a program that flies under the radar, eventually you’re going to get to a pressure point in a big game.
“The benefit of playing and coaching at UConn is the expectations are so high so the pressure’s always on. So, going into NCAA Tournament games, I think we wear the pressure well now. And doing what we did last year and having the season we’ve had this year, I think there’s a confidence about us.”
UConn fell in the Big East semifinal game last year before getting the No. 4 seed out west, then rolling through Iona, Saint Mary’s, Arkansas, Miami and San Diego State to win the national title.
The Huskies would face one of last year’s Cinderellas in Florida Atlantic or Northwestern on Sunday should UConn knock off Stetson, which made its way into this year’s NCAA Tournament on the program’s first-ever automatic bid following their Sun Belt Conference title.
“Obviously, we’re vulnerable like any other team in the country when we don’t play to our identity,” Hurley said, “but I think we’re a more joyful group going into this tournament than we were last year.”
UConn could become the first program to repeat as national champs since Florida did so in 2006 and 2007 and would cap an impressive year for the Huskies, which included their first undefeated season at home since 2006.