STORRS – Before the UConn men’s basketball team walked into Gampel Pavilion for the annual First Night festivities, the defending national champions had to pick up their bling.
The rings, which were distributed in a private ceremony Friday, feature five diamonds on the face and have 76 stones in the bezel to represent the amount of points the Huskies scored in the national title game. The inside includes an engraved “120” – the Huskies’ total point differential throughout the NCAA Tournament – and the final scores from each of the six tournament wins.
The team got a second ring from the NCAA which featured the Husky logo on its face.
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#HU5KIES pic.twitter.com/zWm7NCs9pO
— UConn Men's Basketball (@UConnMBB) October 13, 2023
“That’s pretty good,” head coach Dan Hurley said, admiring his new accessory. “Timing’s weird though, because you’re obsessing over the current state of your team and you’re obsessing over whatever recruiting you still have going on. And while you’re doing that, you then get your national championship ring from like six months ago.
“It’s an incredible moment, I think obviously we’re on to six.”
Hurley likened the excitement surrounding the ring ceremony to that of cutting down the nets and visiting the White House. The last celebration will come before the Nov. 6 season-opener, when the program’s fifth national championship banner will be unveiled in Gampel.
“Those are the ones that only the big champions get,” he said.
Hurley was able to just sit back and enjoy Friday night, watching the various skills contests with the sold-out crowd’s focus away from him.
“This is, for me, like the one time that I’ll come into these packed arenas when we’re involved in it where I don’t have the pressure to win. So this is about the fans, the student fans, our new players (…) it’s their kind of public introduction to them and I just kind of lay back and soak it all in,” he said. “It’s a wake-up call too, the first time you walk into Gampel and it’s a little bit cold out, you know winter’s coming and then you get in there and you feel the electricity.
“They came to these events as a recruit but now they announce your name and you hope you don’t fall and you hope you picked a cool song and if you’re a good dancer you don’t want to embarrass yourself if you do something wack because then we’ll make fun of them too.”
Jayden Ross beats Solo Ball in the dunk “showcase” pic.twitter.com/PrmsmVF4YL
— Joe Arruda (@joearruda9) October 14, 2023
During the event, the new Huskies seemed to have control of the nerves.
Cam Spencer, the Rutgers transfer hit 9-of-12 in the opening round of the 3-point contest while he was teamed up with Caroline Ducharme of the women’s program – Spencer and Ducharme lost to the defending champions Alex Karaban and Azzi Fudd in the final round. And Jayden Ross, the freshman who has impressed coaches throughout the summer and into the fall, threw down a two-handed reverse dunk to beat classmate Solo Ball in the one-on-one “dunk showcase.” Ball went with a one-handed slam off the backboard.
Hurley was “thrilled” that this year’s event didn’t include a full dunk contest.
“We usually practice a really hard hour and 50 (minutes) and we traditionally do that, and I think it hurts the boys with the dunking and then the show flops,” he said. “It’s not very impressive, the dunk contest in past years for us so we’ve gone away from it.”
In its place, the programs participated in a “hot shot” challenge where two-person teams shot from all over the court to add up different point values. Karaban and Hassan Diarra each hit half-court shots as their time run out. There was also a skills challenge, similar to the one during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, that helped Team White, captained by Donovan Clingan, win the night.
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