March Madness: No. 4 UConn surges to rout of No. 3 Gonzaga, advancing to first Final Four since 2014

Don’t let the absence of all four No. 1 seeds give off the false impression that next weekend’s Final Four is wide open.

The way UConn bulldozed through the NCAA tournament’s strongest region, the Huskies have emerged as unassailable title favorites.

UConn clinched its first Final Four in nine years on Saturday night with a 82-54 demolition of previously surging Gonzaga. In what was hyped as a matchup of two of the strongest teams remaining in the field, the Huskies built a seven-point halftime lead, tripled that in the opening five-plus minutes of the second half and then extended their advantage to as many as 33 before sending in their backups.

The 28-point final margin represented Gonzaga’s most one-sided loss in nearly 13 years. Three of the Huskies’ four NCAA tournament opponents have succumbed by at least 23 points. Only slow-paced Saint Mary’s kept the final score respectable, staying within one at halftime before falling by 15.

Awaiting UConn in the national semifinals in Houston will be the winner of Sunday’s Midwest regional final between Texas and Miami. Florida Atlantic has already advanced to the Final Four out of the East region and will meet the winner of San Diego State-Creighton.

To basketball fans of a certain age, UConn swaggering into the Final Four must feel just like old times. The brash, bold Huskies of the 1990s and 2000s punched up in weight class until they were among college basketball’s top programs and then captured national titles at a rate that not even those bluebloods could match.

But basketball fans of a younger generation have never heard of the 1990 “Dream Season” and didn’t experience the heyday of Donyell, Ray, Rip and Ben. They’ve only read about ‘99 UConn toppling an indomitable Duke team. They weren’t yet in high school when Kemba Walker put the Huskies on his back in 2011 or when Shabazz Napier duplicated that three years later.

After that 2014 championship, UConn lost its way. The Huskies reached the NCAA tournament only once in the next six years while stranded in the mishmash American Athletic Conference. They got hit with NCAA sanctions. They endured a messy breakup with Kevin Ollie, a one-time UConn standout and Jim Calhoun’s hand-picked successor.

The 2018 hire of Hurley helped spark UConn’s gradual return to relevance. So did the Huskies’ long-overdue return to the Big East a couple years later. And yet while UConn returned to the NCAA tournament in 2021 and 2022, the program hadn’t yet come close to recapturing the dominance and intimidation factor of the bygone era.

That much was obvious in February 2022 when UConn notched its first victory of the Hurley era over Villanova. Fans at the XL Center responded by storming the court, a celebration that felt beneath a program of UConn’s stature.