The NCAA Tournament is known for being unpredictable, but over the last two years, the Connecticut Huskies have been anything but. In fact, it's fair to argue that UConn has become inevitable. It's a rare quality that only some of the greatest teams of all-time have managed to possess. But then again, with a win in the National Championship Game against two-time National Player of the Year Zach Edey and the Purdue Boilermakers, that's exactly how we'll need to categorize this particular UConn team… historically great, and on the short list of the greatest college basketball teams ever.

A little over four years ago, the idea of the Connecticut Huskies basketball program ascending to these heights would've seemed unbelievably far-fetched. At the time, the Huskies were a middling program in the AAC, and head coach Dan Hurley was in just his second year leading the team. There were no signs of what UConn would become, and the only thing that seemed inevitable was that a return to the top of the college basketball world felt like it was a hundred years away. And yet, following a non-conference loss to Villanova in the middle of January, Dan Hurley sat at the podium and confidently delivered what would turn out to be remarkably prescient statement:

And now, just four years later, with a National Championship already in his back pocket and his team one win away from capturing a second consecutive title, Dan Hurley gets to sit at a postgame podium in the Final Four, and make a statement like this one:

And here's the really crazy thing… nobody batted an eye when Dan Hurley said this on Saturday night, because it couldn't be more true. Consider:

-UConn has won 51 of their last 56 games, and they've won their last 11 NCAA Tournament games by an average margin of 22.2 points per game. Every single one of those 11 wins have come by double digits.

-The Huskies have been more dominant this year than they were last year, coming into the NCAA Tournament with a better record and a Big East Tournament Title, and defeating their five opponents thus far by an average of 25 points per game. This is despite the fact that they lost three starters and five of their nine rotation players from last year's championship team.

-In 200 minutes of action, the Huskies have trailed for less than five total minutes in the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

-In the 148 games since Dan Hurley's “You better get us now” press conference, Connecticut is 114-34. In the 148 game span prior to Hurley's press conference, the Huskies were 78-70.

So how is it that Dan Hurley has turned the Connecticut Huskies into a generational juggernaut in just four year's time? And why is it that I'm so confident that the Huskies will once again be cutting down the nets on Monday night, despite having to get through what will certainly be their toughest test yet in the Purdue Boilermakers? Let's dive in!

The UConn Huskies Offense 

Here's what is so scary about UConn's 2024 NCAA Tournament run… so far, the Huskies are shooting just 30 percent from three-point range in their five tournament games, which means that they're scoring more points per game in the Tournament than in the regular season despite their three-point shooting dipping from 36 percent in the regular season to 30 percent in the Big Dance. This is because the Huskies don't need the three-ball to be falling to beat you. They also don't need to get to the line to beat you, and they don't need to dominate in the paint to beat you either. This is not a one-trick pony offensively, nor is it at all heliocentric. There's not one singular scorer in the Huskies rotation that opponents can build their game plan around stopping, and evidence of this is that all five starters are averaging somewhere between 10.6 points and 16.2 points per game in the NCAA Tournament. It's an equal opportunity offense that, unlike suffocating and relentless defense, has not historically been a calling card of head coach Dan Hurley.

“My mental health is much better embracing offense,” Hurley said ahead of the NCAA Tournament, according to Michael Cohen of FOX Sports. The offense that the Huskies have embraced is a product of a months-long collaborative effort between Hurley and his coaching staff. The way Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post describes it is as such:

“Two years ago, believing his program had reached the verge of a breakthrough, Hurley overhauled UConn’s offense. Hurley barricaded himself in an office with assistants Luke Murray and Kimani Young, studying offensive sets from all corners of the basketball world, particularly European leagues. They melded concepts from FIBA and the Golden State Warriors to create an offense based on side-to-side movement, intricate off-ball screens, quick passing and open space.”

The result has been what is by far the prettiest half court offense in the country, with five guys playing offensive basketball the way it's supposed to be played. There's so much ball and player movement that it becomes nearly impossible for even the most disciplined defenses in the country to keep up with all of the actions for an entire 30-second shot clock. And the Huskies remain patient, no matter how deep into the shot clock they take the possession. When things break down, multiple Huskies are capable of creating a shot off the dribble, but breakdowns are incredibly rare.

“I’ve been studying the top offenses in the country in-depth for the past five years, and UConn’s combination of off-ball screening and ball movement within their sets and the number of sets that they run makes it the most complex offense that I’ve seen in that time,” according to Jordan Sperber, a former video coordinator at New Mexico State (h/t CJ Moore of The Athletic).

It's not just that UConn runs their elaborate offensive sets with such precision, or that there's never a point in time when there's someone on the floor who stalls the offense. Every offensive action has a purpose, and that purpose is to end the possession with the most efficient shot possible. It's not an accident that, according to CBB Analytics, “more than 76 percent of UConn's total field goal attempts during the regular season came from either three-point range or the restricted area.”

Amazingly, I haven't even touched on how deadly UConn is when they get out and run. No team in the country is better at turning missed shots or turnovers into instant offense the other way, and that has just as much to do with personnel as it does coaching. Tristen Newton throws the nicest hit-ahead passes in the country. Donovan Clingan and Samson Johnson are two of the better bigs in the country at running the floor. Stephon Castle is a tank attacking the basket. And Cam Spencer and Alex Karaban seem to find legitimate joy in burying back-breaking transition three's. Just check out what the Huskies were able to do in their 30-0 run against Illinois. 13 of UConn's 30 points in this run came in transition.

The UConn Huskies Defense

The old saying goes that defense wins championships, and that's clearly a moniker that Dan Hurley abides by. Hurley says that his team's identity “is to be pretty relentless,” per Phil Chardis of uconnhuskies.com, but what that really means is that his squad relentlessly takes away what opposing offenses do best, and you don't need to look any further than three of UConn's five tournament wins this year.

Against Northwestern in the Round of 32 and Illinois in the Elite Eight, the Huskies were tasked with stopping two of the most prolific scorers in the country — Boo Buie and Terrence Shannon Jr. They did so with very little resistance. Buie and Shannon were held to a combined 17 points on 4-for-27 shooting. It was the only time all season that Terrence Shannon finished a game with under 10 points, and Boo Buie's 9-point outing was his second lowest of the season.

Again, this has just as much to do with personnel as it does scheme. Sure, the Huskies are obviously well-coached and they rarely miss defensive rotations. But Dan Hurley has been blessed with a group of guards and forwards that are super switchable, incredibly smart, and remarkably competitive. Freshman wing Stephon Castle deserves an individual shoutout here, considering he's been the one all season long who has taken on the biggest defensive assignments. Insane considering, again, Castle is only a freshman.

And hey, it also helps that behind those very switchable, smart, and competitive perimeter defenders the Huskies have a 7'2″ behemoth who has established himself as the best rim protector in college basketball.

In his last four NCAA Tournament games, Donovan Clingan is averaging 4.5 blocks per game. He swatted 8 shots in the Huskies 2nd round win over Northwestern, though some have suggested he should've been credited with at least two more. In the Elite Eight, the Fighting Illini were 0-for-19 when challenging Clingan at the rim. And in what was perhaps his most important performance of the tournament, Connecticut's improved defense in the 2nd half against Alabama in the Final Four was a result of a shift in how the Huskies were defending the Tide.

“The first half, we were dying on screens and letting them come off screens and get open shots,” Donovan Clingan said after the game. “The second half, we were more aggressive, we played a lot more high hand, running them off the three-point line and I was telling everyone to try to force them into me and I'll protect the rim and put an umbrella around the three-point line.”

In the end, Connecticut wore Bama down with body blows, just as they have to their previous 35 opponents this year. For the game, Alabama took 35 two-point attempts and 23 three's. In the regular season, the Tide averaged only four more two-point attempts than three's. But because the Huskies relentlessly ran the Crimson Tide off the three-point line and funneled them to Clingan, the 72 points Alabama scored were 18 points under their season average.

The UConn Huskies Culture 

The final piece of this difficult-to-solve UConn puzzle is the culture that Dan Hurley has instilled in Storrs, Connecticut. Without buy-in from everyone on the roster, nothing else matters. Without guys who are willing to take charges, run the floor, make extra passes, never miss rotations, dive for loose balls, lift up their teammates and do all of the little things that impact winning, the big things that they do so well wouldn't seem so daunting.

“We’ve just got people that are desperate to win more. We’re winners. We’ve got ‘We’ guys,” is how Dan Hurley explained it, according to Joe Arruda of the Hartford Courant. It helps too that this group of “winners” and “‘we' guys” is also keenly aware of the legacy they can leave behind not just in Storrs, but in the grander picture of college hoops history, if they're the ones cutting down the nets in Glendale on Monday night.

“These guys right now are leaving a legacy in a place that’s hard to leave a legacy. It’s been a historical season in a tough place to make history. They’re galvanized by that. It’s special,” Hurley shared.

The weight of winning back-to-back championships is something that has been too much for many great programs to handle in the past. There's good reason why there have been only two back-to-back champions in the last four decades. This shit is really hard. But at every difficult juncture, the Huskies just keep moving forward without fail.

“We don’t crumble,” Clingan said on Saturday night, per Mike Lopresti of NCAA.com. It's not just that the Huskies haven't crumbled. They appear to be relishing in their pursuit of greatness. Assistant coach Luke Murray called it, “a maniacal feeling about winning games.” (h/t Brendan Quinn of The Athletic).

And when a group that is this talented and this well-coached has that feeling, it's no wonder they're on the verge of putting themselves in the pantheon of some of the greatest teams ever to win a National Championship.