The Men’s Basketball Version of LSU Football

LSU Football and UConn Men’s Basketball are the exact same program.

Your program is on top of the world. After the firing of a National Championship Head Coach, your fears about ever getting back to the top of the mountain have been assuaged. No, you aren’t in the top 5 every single year. No, you don’t have the same storied history of dusty championships, remanded only to history books and vanishing memories, as some other programs. You are something of a quirky outsider to the pantheon of blue-bloods.

Yet, you keep winning Titles. You keep winning them at a rate most of the “blue-bloods” dream of. Since around the turn of the millennium, you can’t stop winning National Titles. Every coach you’ve had in charge of your program since that first title, your last 3 coaches, has won one, including beloved, child-of-the-university coaches who, after their championships, lost their way, didn’t work out, and left your program a bit of a mess.

Most recently, an eccentric, beloved, entertaining, intense pure culture-fit, after a hard-fought loss to a rival early in his tenure, has called his shot. We’re on our way, look out. Laughed off at first, he would return a couple of years later to cash that check with a dominant run to the national championship.

If UConn’s place in their sport reminds you of another program, think about how it feels for me! One of the few who root for both LSU football and UConn basketball, I can’t help but feel like I have two seasons of LSU football every single year. At every turn, I get a sense of Deja Vu. It’s never been more powerful than now.

SN

Ha-Vy Nguyen, And The Valley Shook

I’m not the only one to notice lately, but given my unique position, I was likely the first. I started having the thought when people wondered how a program like UConn could just…continue to win titles all the way back in 2014. With both teams winning in 2019 and 2023 respectively, I couldn’t avoid it anymore. It’s not entirely perfect, Orgeron is but an amalgam of Hurley and Ollie. He has the connection to the university and subsequent, unfortunate collapse of Ollie, but the unique personality and culture-fit (and shot-calling ability) of Hurley.

This is all rambling, I’m operating on very little sleep after celebrating through the last few nights, and I’m just overjoyed by the program I grew up on regaining its supremacy, but cmon, if you can’t see the similarities now…