"Man, oh man, we did that, didn't we?" UConn sophomore guard Jordan Hawkins said to a crowded Gampel Pavilion.
The UConn Huskies returned home after defeating San Diego State to win their fifth national championship in the past 25 years and fans greeted them at a rally Tuesday afternoon in Storrs.
The UConn Huskies topped off one of the most impressive March Madness runs in history Monday night to bring home a fifth national title with a 76-59 victory over San Diego State.
“We have the four national championships coming in, right?” coach Dan Hurley said. “We were striving for No. 5. Now we’ve got our own.”
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"We had to remind people last night where the basketball capitol of the world is and that's Storrs, Connecticut," Hurley continued. "And I promise you, just let us get a little bit of sleep and we'll start working on number six."
UConn star Adama Sanogo won Most Outstanding Player honors, finishing with 17 points and 10 rebounds in the final.
“I feel like I am on top of the world right now,” he said after the win.
And Sanogo — make that Adama — adds himself to others on a first-name basis up on that campus — along with Huskies legends like Kemba (Walker), Rip (Hamilton) and Emeka (Okafor). He averaged 19.7 points and 9.8 rebounds over UConn's six-game cruise through the tournament.
Tristen Newton also had a double-double with 19 points and 10 boards.
The Huskies (31-8) became the fifth team since the bracket expanded in 1985 to win all six NCAA Tournament games by double-digits on the way to a championship. 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.
Hawkins was on the Today Show Tuesday morning.
“Oh man, it was a feeling I couldn’t explain,” he said.
“Growing up, you always dream about playing in a championship game, but winning is a whole different thing. It still hasn’t hit me yet,” he told Craig Melvin, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb. “It’s coming to me though.”
Hawkins is not the only member of his family to win a national championship. His cousin Angel Reese led LSU to the women’s crown.
"I'm just so pleased for Connecticut, so pleased for what it means, you know, this is a basketball franchise - one of the best in the world, the UConn men - coming back for their fifth national title, and the pride that brings to the state of Connecticut, the fact that for least one brief and shiny moment, everybody around the country was talking about UConn, talking about Connecticut," Gov. Ned Lamont said in an interview.
UConn fan Bill Murray was one of the few celebrities on hand to watch the Huskies make it five for five in title games in one of the most unexpected Final Fours in history. This one marked the last that Jim Nantz would call after 37 years behind the mic.
He’s had a lot of UConn stories to tell, though this certainly wasn’t the most dramatic.
UConn’s latest coronation makes Hurley the third coach to bring a trophy home to Storrs. He joins Jim Calhoun (1999, 2004, 2001) and Kevin Ollie (2014).
The team landed at Bradley International Airport around 3:30 p.m. to applause. The team buses were escorted back to campus. Then, a Welcome Home rally was held at Gampel Pavilion.
"Both teams are going to be extraordinarily good next year. The women did us proud this year, they were amazing as well," Lamont said.
