With so many college basketball heavyweights in one place, the discussions in Washington, D.C., were bound to be macro in nature. As Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, UConn’s Dan Hurley, St. John’s Rick Pitino and Duke’s Jon Scheyer arrived at the NCAA East Regional, they were asked to weigh un on everything from today’s youth, social media’s corruptive influences to a society gone soft and, of course, NIL and the transfer portal.
Pitino, who has rapidly turned his program, downtrodden for a generation, into a title contender, led off with a dismissal of the concept of “blue bloods,” poking the pretentious in ribs.
“Blue bloods no longer control basketball,” said Pitino, who was eliminated by blue blood Duke on Friday night. “There’s no difference between Kentucky, North Carolina than Illinois or St. John’s. There’s no difference anymore. There’s no difference between Michigan State, who is a blue blood, to any of the other teams from the conferences, from Mississippi, when they get it going. It’s all going to be the same.
“You’re going to see 40 to 50 teams all the same. There’s no such thing as a blue blood anymore. There’s no difference between North Carolina State and somebody else. Everybody is the same. Everybody is the same in basketball. That’s what’s going to make it a great product.”
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That loud gasp and big crash you heard might’ve been Thurston and Lovey Howell dropping their wine glasses as they fainted in their crippled yacht. Some of the upper crust begged to differ.
“Well, I love Rick, but I don’t agree with that,” Izzo said. “I think a blue blood is somebody that’s earned it over time. What I’ve always looked for is consistency. If you can be consistent not over two years, four years, but 10 years, 15 years. Now, we know with the changing environment and everything, it’s going to be harder to sustain that kind of thing. To me, Kentucky and Duke, Kansas had earned that over years and years and years.
“There might not be as many blue bloods anymore, but I like the term because I think that means you’ve withstood the test of time and you’ve earned the right over years and years and years.”
The very term blue blood evokes the image of old money vs. Johnnies-come-lately. In the era of NIL, revenue sharing and easy transfer rules, any team can crash the elite party like Rodney Dangerfield making his presence known in “Caddyshack.”
A school with enough money to throw at a program and the right coach can become elite overnight, as Indiana has done in football. Pitino, 73, who won championships at blue-bloods Kentucky and Louisville, came to St. John’s three years ago and got a blank check, no need to settle for leftover loose change from football, and he had the pro experience to pursue college free agents — and how well he has done it. He overtook UConn and rose to the top of the Big East in years two and three.
But UConn held off Michigan State on Friday to reach the Elite Eight for the third time in four years, the program’s seventh championship still in play. The Huskies play Duke on Sunday in the regional final.
“Nowadays I think tradition, history, it doesn’t mean as much as it did to recruits,” Hurley said. “Whether they’re portal or high school players. You can’t get by on your brand anymore. None of these kids care about that anymore. None of the people close to them care about it because the majority of the people that are advising the kids now are agents who are looking at it from a business perspective, or families that are not sentimental about any of this.
“Fans don’t understand it, media doesn’t understand it. You have as good a chance to win at a non-blue blood, maybe even a better chance, because you don’t have the pressure and the expectations or the burden of the jersey or the logo.”
My two cents: Blue bloods may have blue periods, as UConn did between 2016 and 2020, but they won’t disappear as standard bearers. The resources they need to sustain and regenerate will always be there, though there will always be the occasional uninvited guest.
More for your Sunday Read:
A parting slap shot at Yale
Keith Allain, who resigned just before last season, ending 19 years as Yale men’s hockey coach, a stint that included the national championship in 2013, got his licks in. He wrote a letter to the university President Maurie McInnis, obtained by Fox News this week, in which he lambasted AD Vicky Chun.
“As a point of reference, our team’s record before Vicky was 220 wins, 144 losses, 39 ties; with Vicky, 62 wins, 110 losses, 15 ties,” Allain wrote. “Responsibility for that record is mine, but we all know organizational leadership or lack of it has an impact. … As a Yale alum and someone who has a great affection for our University and the role of athletics within the greater Yale community, I felt compelled write you as my former colleagues asked.
“Vicky Chun is the absolute worst leader I have ever been around in my life. She is dishonest, self-centered and inaccessible. Vicky’s singular talent is self-promotion and has created a toxic environment within the department where she is insulated by a cadre of administrators whose main task seems to be silencing any dissent.”
Okay, then … Chun, hired in 2018, is under contract through June; Yale has not yet hired Allain’s replacement. The school did replace football coach Tony Reno, who stepped aside for health reasons, with Kevin Cahill, a very popular choice as he had been Yale’s offensive coordinator and a successful head coach at Lehigh. Something is obviously in need of re-evaluation in New Haven. Quite a few solid folks have left, but to be fair it should be noted that while men’s hockey fortunes have waned since the pandemic, Yale has had notable success in several sports in the 2020s, including women’s hockey, football, men’s basketball, lacrosse and soccer. There was also a five-race winning streak against Harvard in The Regatta that ended in 2024.
It’s worth staying tuned on this one.
JON OLSON | Special to Hartford Magazine
Will Jeff Dooley, announcer for the Hartford Yard Goats, be called to the majors to stay?
Sunday short takes
*Jeff Dooley, longtime voice of the Rock Cats and Yard Goats, is a finalist for an MLB broadcasting job with the parent Colorado Rockies. Several of the organizations’ affiliates were in spring training to work games broadcast back to Colorado as an audition of sorts. No surprise, fans liked what they heard. In an unscientific poll on the Purple Row website, 45 percent expressed a preference for Dooley, 21 points better than anyone else. The Sunday Read says, give the people out there what they want.
*Wolf Pack coach Grant Potulny was a finalist in Minnesota’s head coaching search, according to reports. Potulny, 46, played at Minnesota before his long career as a college and pro player and coach, stays put. Minnesota hired St. Cloud State’s Brett Larson.
*Sacred Heart’s Felix Trudeau signed a two-year entry level contract with the NHL’s St. Louis Blues after the Pioneers season, and will report to Springfield in the AHL. Trudeau, the Atlantic Hockey America Player of the Year, and a Hobey Baker finalist, had 48 points, 25 goals, and led the nation in power play goals with 12.
*Jackson Marshall, towering transfer from Southern New Hampshire, is hitting .346 with seven homers and 20 RBI in his first 26 games with the UConn baseball team. Marshall, 6 feet 8 and 275 pounds, was New Hampshire’s Mr. Basketball, a 2,000-point scorer as a high school player, in case Hurley needs a little front court help next year.
*Learned some interesting stuff this week during a visit to UHart, where former president Walter Harrison’s teaching an adult class on college sports. Would you have guessed that one-third of Trinity College students are athletes? Or that the athletic department costs $11 million to operate, but generates $33 million in tuition from students who’d likely be somewhere else if their sport were not offered there? It’s not unusual; this is the D-III appeal.
*Paul Maurice, who was named Whalers coach at age 28 in 1995, coached his 2,000th NHL game last week, joining Scotty Bowman in that club. With back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Panthers, Maurice is a sure Hall of Famer, and he has several years in front of him yet.
*Carla Berube’s hire at Northwestern seems a perfect fit. She has thrived at academics-first institutions, Tufts and Princeton, and now goes to such a school in a big market, with Big Ten resources. If Berube can engineer a turnaround there, it would be another impressive line on her resume come the day her alma mater, UConn, is on a search.
*Luke Murray will be staying with UConn until the Huskies’ season ends. Why not? What could have more value in his recruiting for Boston College than his being on TV in the Elite Eight, or beyond?
Dom Amore: How UConn football’s Chris Freeman got his knack for making clutch kicks
*There were 27 NFL teams represented at UConn’s Pro Day, which included players from a number of schools. They got another long look at quarterback Joe Fagnano and receiver Skyler Bell, who made inroads at The Combine and impressed again. UConn’s Chris Freeman showed off an NFL-caliber leg, kicking a 65-yard field goal.
*Who can predict the first date the Houston WNBA franchise starts wearing “Connecticut Sun throwback” uniforms? I’ll take 10 games into their second season.
Last word
It’s the MORNING fog that’s supposed to chill the air in San Francisco, so I’m glad neither my heart nor my money was into Netflix for its hazy Opening Day-turned-theme-park experience. …. Anyway, my predictions for the baseball season: The Yankees win 95 games, the Red Sox 91, the Mets 89, and all three teams make the playoffs. (P.S., I hate predictions as much as I hate MLB’s new TV set up. Gimme baseball on the radio.)
