Back when he first came to town – back when some of his Big East peers derided his school as the Northwestern of the conference and questioned why Dave Gavitt even let them in – Jim Calhoun tried to solve UConn’s identity crisis one misinformed person at a time.
“No, it’s UConn with a U,’’ he would explain, “Not Yukon with a Y. We’re not in Alaska.’’
It is near unfathomable to imagine such issues today. To confuse UConn with anything other than the University of Connecticut would be akin to assuming Duke was merely some nobleman in England. The Huskies have won six national championships, crafting the cow patch in Storrs into a modern-day blueblood. No school – not Duke, not North Carolina, not Kansas, not Kentucky – has hoisted as many banners in the last 30 years as UConn…