WASHINGTON, D.C. — When a team wins the national championship in college basketball, there are a series of milestones that accompany it. There’s the on-court and locker room celebrations, the victory parade, trip to the New York Stock Exchange, cameos in all sorts of different important places and so much more. Perhaps above those all is the visit that teams get to make to Washington, D.C. to see the President of the United States.
Being in such an incredible and historic place is a once in a lifetime opportunity for most of the players that get to go. For many of the Huskies in attendance Tuesday, this wasn’t their first go around.
“Welcome back” were the first words uttered by President Joe Biden as he brought the champion Connecticut Huskies into the White House. For many, this was their second annual trek to the nation’s capital, with the Huskies climbing to the top of college basketball for two straight years. This became a common theme throughout the afternoon focused around the Huskies, though Biden began it by pointing out his colleagues and staffers who had ties to UConn.
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Almost as if appealing to every Husky fan who has been on X (formerly Twitter) for the past four and a half years, Biden continued his remarks by quoting one of the most famous Dan Hurley moments that preceded the coach’s greatness.
“On January 20, 2020, following the loss to Villanova, coach Hurley said, ‘you better get us now,’ that’s all; ‘you better get us now.’ Damn coach you were right,” Biden said. “Four years later, for the first time in 17 years, there’s back-to-back men’s college basketball champions, the UConn Huskies.”
Biden continued, familiarizing the esteemed crowd with the lengths Connecticut went towards capturing the title.
“For the sixth time in 25 years, the Huskies are at the top of the basketball world again, that’s pretty cool,” he noted. “It wasn’t easy–they started the year underestimated. They only lost three players the previous season to the NBA. People questioned whether they had the talent to go back-to-back. I guess they didn’t see you guys standing up then. Although I should note, I picked you guys on my ticket.”
Maybe Biden’s choice to put the Huskies at the top of his bracket was influenced by their regular season dominance. And as the President continued to describe, their command over the rest of college basketball didn’t finish at the Big East tournament in Madison Square Garden.
“You proved everyone wrong, winning the Big East regular season title, winning the Big East tournament, winning the NCAA tournament games by an average of 23 points. Even though you made it look easy at times, you made a lot of sacrifices. The trust you built with each other, knowing everyone was going after you every time you showed up on the court. You’re winners, and winners win.”
And the deserving result is something that is becoming difficult to deny: the status of the Huskies as blue bloods of the sport. Now tied for third among college basketball programs with six titles, even the country’s president had to give his take on the matter.
“Now there’s no doubt at all about who are the blue bloods of basketball,” Biden attested. “With this team sending four players to the NBA draft this year, sending 11 athletes to the Paris Olympics, there’s clearly something in the water up there; I don’t know what you’ve all been drinking.”
And Biden wasn’t afraid to call his shot about UConn’s upcoming success with Hurley.
“Coach, you’ve said that UConn has been running college basketball for 30 years. With you at the helm, I think they better get ready for another 30.”
Then, Hurley took the stage. His speech certainly didn’t go without hitches, but to say that he wasn’t his authentic self would be a lie.
“Everywhere we go, we say this thing, right? When we go into an arena, when we enter the place and it’s, ‘the champs are here,’ said Hurley.”
The coach didn’t get far into his speech before Biden introduced the subject of Hurley’s dragon underwear that became famous, suddenly altering the trajectory of the afternoon. Now Hurley was informing the President of America of what underwear he had on. Not your average Tuesday.
And from there, Hurley managed to find himself going a bit off script too.
“I thought this would be easier in year two,” he noted. “‘Oh man I’ve been to the White House before’, this is scary as s***.”
Just as his foot stayed on the gas during the tournament run throughout March and April, his foot ended up in his mouth in the East Room of the White House. Nobody seemed to mind though.
“Thank you Mr. President and everyone in here who’s joined us for the celebration today,” Hurley ceremoniously resumed. “We said it last year, we wanted to make this thing an annual visit for us. Here we are again as back-to-back champs. Obviously thrilled to be here. Our goal going into the year; We knew we had the potential to have a special team and it was a real simple mindset that we were trying to create, which was: let’s just win every single tournament, every opportunity to win a championship, let’s just win everything. There were five opportunities for us to win championship trophies during the course of the season and we won all five.”
Relishing the moment and the challenges that he and his team overcame, he continued.
“Being a championship program, I think everyone in the organization understands the standards and the way we go about our business. It’s the highest possible standards that we hold each other to. We understand that because we’ve climbed the mountain before. This team here was a different group of men that we took the court with this year. We produced even greater results and an even greater team, a team that’ll go down as one of the most dominant teams in college basketball history the way we destroyed everyone.”
While enjoying the current one is hard not to do, Hurley couldn’t help but pivot towards his next mountain–not without some more profanity.
“We played a brand of basketball that was absolutely beautiful and absolutely dominant, but all we can think about is winning the next one. It’s weird as s***.”
Focusing in on this upcoming journey, he reflected on the mindset of being present in the White House, while remaining fixated on his third title.
“Strengthened by our success as a program, our focus is quickly turning to our pursuit in our third national championship in a row, the coach said. “Today is a great day to pause–basically you just celebrate cool stuff like this and then work really hard. For us right now, it’s lock in on the 3-peat, celebrate these incredible players we’ve lost and go get ready to truly make history in college basketball next year as the first 3-peat championship since Coach Wooden and truly do something historic. That is not lost on any of us, the enormity of our season coming up. It’s special.”
Hurley then presented Biden a second Connecticut jersey in as many years, this time flag blue. Biden graciously accepted, the finishing touch on what was a special day and evidently his last time doing this as President. Even then, the Huskies won’t be able to shake the 46th president if they come out on top next year.
“Although I won’t be president next year–I’m retiring–but I may come back and watch you,” Biden said with a smile.
And now the 2023-2024 Huskies go their separate ways, the last time in a while that they’ll all be together at once. It’ll be onto better things for them, but this is quite the way to close the era out.
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