UConn’s 2004 national championship team overcame burden of expectation, will be inducted into Huskies of Honor
After losses in the Elite Eight and the Sweet Sixteen in back-to-back years, the UConn men’s basketball program rolled out an experienced roster for the 2003-04 season that was expected by many to win it all before the year began.
The roster, headlined by Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon, selected one after another with the second and third picks in that year’s NBA Draft, sent a total of six players to the league. Before the year began, Okafor was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s college basketball preview alongside women’s great Diana Taurasi as both teams entered the season ranked No. 1 in the AP poll.
The men dropped their fourth game of the year in the preseason NIT semifinal, 71-66 to Georgia Tech as Okafor played through a back injury, but then rattled off 11 straight wins in response – all but two by at least 20 points. UConn (33-6) took four of its six losses in Big East play, losing a share of the regular-season title with a loss at Syracuse in the season finale, and beat Pittsburgh, the No. 1 seed, to win the conference tournament.
“Expectations were so high that we were made almost godlike. People wrote that we weren’t going to lose a game in the Big East,” head coach Jim Calhoun was quoted as saying in SI’s national championship edition which had Okafor on the cover again, this time headlined: “DOMINANT.”
Beginning its NCAA Tournament run as a No. 2 seed, UConn won all of its games by an average of 17.5 points to earn a spot in San Antonio for the program’s second Final Four appearance.
Okafor picked up two early fouls and sat out for almost all of the first half in the national semifinal against Duke. The elite big man returned to register all 18 of his points in the second half as UConn scored 12 straight down the stretch to erase an eight-point deficit with under three minutes to go. After that one, a 79-78 victory, all that was left was a rematch with Georgia Tech – and that team wasn’t going to allow a similar result.
The Huskies led by as many as 25 and cruised to an 82-73 win. Okafor, Gordon and Rashad Anderson, the team’s third leading scorer, were named to the all-tournament team. The next day, the women’s team beat Tennessee and UConn became the first school to ever win dual championships in basketball.
On Sunday, now 20 years later, the 2004 men’s team will come together again in Hartford to join the 1999 champions as the second full team on the men’s side inducted into the Huskies of Honor.
“It was just such a talented team, we were preseason No. 1 in a lot of people’s eyes, and it always felt like we were carrying a burden all year,” said Tom Moore, a UConn assistant then and now. “We never really, during the year, had a stretch where we felt like we were dominant. There was a couple injuries and Emeka had some back things. … It was funny, we just never really felt like we hit full stride all year.”
UConn beat Oklahoma, ranked sixth in the nation at the time, by 27 points during its early 11-game winning streak. Then, after dropping two to No. 9 North Carolina and Providence, and losing back-to-back games on the road about two weeks later, the heavy preseason favorites dropped to No. 8 in the poll and finished the regular season at No. 9.
“Externally people were like, ‘They’re the best team in the country,’ heading into (the season) and internally we felt that, too. So when your goal is national championship or nothing, it’s a weight and I thought Coach Calhoun carried the weight great,” Moore said. “He always carried the weight but I thought the guys carried the weight of that expectation and pressure, I thought they carried it really well.
“A lot of them had imminent NBA opportunities too that they had to work through so it was a mature group, too. They didn’t get rattled through the highs and lows … because there were a few more lows than we thought there would be.”
Charlie Villanueva, a freshman in ’04, and Hilton Armstrong, a year ahead, joined Okafor and Gordon in 2005 and 2006, respectively, to make four eventual lottery picks on that UConn roster. Josh Boone and Marcus Williams also went on to spend time in the NBA.
Taliek Brown, the point guard, played internationally and then returned to UConn for three years as director of player development before becoming an assistant to Rick Pitino at Iona and now Big East foe St. John’s.
“It’s funny when you see those groups like that, when they get back together they immediately pick up like it was the locker room in San Antonio,” Moore said. “They’re in a different spot in their lives, too. They’re married, some of them have kids and stuff, so it’ll be really fun to see them sort of revert back to like when they were in college.”
The team will be honored before this year’s Huskies host Xavier at noon with a familiar No. 1 next to their name.
Going for back-to-back national championships, something only Florida (2006-07) has done in this century, Dan Hurley’s team holds a similar, yet different, burden. Losing three NBA players and two veteran bench pieces after the 2023 title, UConn entered the year sixth in the preseason poll and was picked to finish third in the Big East. At this point, approaching the middle of the conference season, there is no clear-cut national championship favorite.
“This group’s pretty good because Coach Hurley does a great job of making it about the next game and his messaging is always fresh and different and slightly changed for every opponent. He has like an uncanny ability to anticipate the potential potholes that these guys could face and then try to challenge (the players) to be ready for them, and then equip them to get through them from a tactical point of view, a motivational point of view,” Moore said.
“An uncanny ability to navigate a team through a season. Coach Calhoun had it, (Hurley) has it. I think he picked that up from the basketball laboratory he was formed in, you’re around (the Hurley family), you pick stuff up.”
