UConn Rivals

Chris Smith takes us on an in-depth journey through the rivalries that have defined and shaped UConn’s storied legacy.

Last week, the Connecticut Huskies played three consecutive games against charter members of the original Big East Conference (technically, Villanova joined in year two, but let's not allow facts to get in the way of the narrative here). To some degree, it almost felt like a classic rivalry week. How many of those schools, if any, are even true UConn rivals anymore? To truly understand and define Husky rivalries in the modern Big East, we need to go back and identify who precisely the biggest Connecticut rivals have been over the past four decades.

The 1990’s:

GEORGETOWN & SYRACUSE

While the Connecticut Men’s program had its fair share of moments before the 1990s, the golden era of UConn Basketball starts with the Dream Season for all intents and purposes. That year, Jim Calhoun and the Huskies captured their first-ever Big East Championship, knocking off Syracuse and Georgetown twice each that season. This was the dawn of a new Big East Conference. No longer would the Huskies be punching up at the Big East behemoths. Over the remainder of the decade, Connecticut would win 13 of 22 matchups with both the Hoyas and Jim Boeheim’s boys. Syracuse would fall to UConn twice in the Big East Tournament Title Game, while John Thompson and Allen Iverson would have their chance to be runners-up in 1996.

Other schools who might consider themselves Connecticut rivals in the 90s really don’t have a legitimate argument. Sure, Kerry Kittles and Villanova steamrolled the Huskies in the 1995 Championship Game, but UConn beat the Wildcats 13 of the other 17 times they faced off. Providence actually had more success in that department than Steve Lappas did, twice upsetting the Huskies at Madison Square Garden, but again, the regular season was a whitewash, with Connecticut going 14-4 against the Friars throughout the decade. Seton Hall was an excellent team in the early 90s but never really faced the Huskies in any big games and completely fell off after PJ Carlesimo’s departure. St. Johns is the only other program that had even marginal success against Jim Calhoun, winning 8 of 21 matchups, although their only Big East Championship Game appearance came in 1999 and was a thrashing at the hands of the Huskies.

Trivia time: Does anyone know how the Eagles of Boston College fared against Connecticut during the 1990s?

@BadChoiceMilk's on X

WOW, 23 Straight.. as the tweet suggests, embarrassing might be an understatement.

2000s - Pittsburgh & Syracuse

The new millennium brought with it a changing of the guard. Coaching turnover and lack of postseason success relegated Georgetown to an afterthought at the onset of the decade. Meanwhile, Jamie Dixon’s Pitt Panthers emerged as a true threat for Big East supremacy in the 2000s. No team appeared in more Big East Title games than Pittsburgh throughout this decade, including three straight against UConn from 2002 to 2004. While Connecticut won two of three in that trilogy, the Panthers would make three more visits to Saturday Night at MSG through 2008. They also played the Huskies to a stalemate in the regular season, as both teams emerged with six victories in the end. Pittsburgh has as good a case as anyone to proclaim themselves the team of this particular decade.

The other program that could legitimately make that claim would be the Syracuse Orange. Much like Pitt, the ‘Cuse won two Big East Tournament Championships. The difference is that Syracuse dominated their postseason matchups with UConn and won a National Title as well. Connecticut held a 10-5 regular season advantage in the decade, but from 2005 through 2009, the Huskies remarkably saw their Big East Title hopes thwarted by Syracuse four times in five years, highlighted by a virtuoso Gerry McNamara performance in 2005 and culminating in the six-overtime classic in 2009.

2010s - Cincinnati

Unfortunately, the 2010s saw the deterioration and disbanding of the original Big East, and no one was more adversely affected than the University of Connecticut. The start of the decade began much the same way the previous one ended, with Syracuse seeming to have a stranglehold on Jim Calhoun and the ongoing rivalry with the Huskies. That is, of course, until Kemba Walker changes everything. Connecticut would knock off the Orange in the semifinals of the amazing 2011 Big East title run before sending Syracuse off to the ACC with “the taste of UConn in their mouth” in 2013. The following season, the “Catholic Seven” broke away from the conference, leaving a mess of an American Athletic Conference behind.

The jumbled nature of the ACC turned Cincinnati and Louisville into the new Connecticut rivals simply out of necessity. The problem with the Cardinals is that they were gone from the league after just one season. Who’s to say what might have happened had they stuck around, but the truth of the matter is that UConn went an abysmal 1-9 against Rick Pitino and Louisville during their time as conference foes, with only the 2011 Big East Championship Game going the way of the Huskies. In fact, once Jim Calhoun retired and handed over the reins to Kevin Ollie, Connecticut never beat Louisville again.

This leads us to the only true rival that UConn had during the Kevin Ollie era (unless you count Kevin Ollie himself as a rival), the Cincinnati Bearcats. Under Mick Cronin, the Bearcats won a staggering 11 of 15 regular season games against the Huskies. Even still, Connecticut almost always seemed to get the upper hand when it mattered most, be it in a surreal second-round NCAA Tournament battle while still Big East brethren in 2011 or the three consecutive AAC Tournament knockouts from 2014-216, including the Jalen Adams quadruple overtime miracle in 2016. UConn closed out the decade getting clobbered by the likes of Tulane, Tulsa and Houston. Fear not, Husky faithful as a new coach and a return to their roots was on the horizon.

2020s - Villanova

It didn’t happen overnight, but the one-two punch of Dan Hurley’s hiring in 2018, followed by the return to the Big East in 2020, has catapulted the UConn Huskies into a stratosphere that was never reached even during the Jim Calhoun era. Coming off back-to-back National Titles, there is absolutely a fair argument to be made that the University of Connecticut has no worthy rivals at this point. Creighton has had a field day with the Huskies in the regular season, particularly in Omaha, where they’ve won all four times. A closer look reveals that two of the other three road/neutral victories the Blue Jays have over the Huskies occurred during Covid without fans in the seats. Until Creighton wins something, anything really, in the postseason, it's hard to take them too seriously as a rival.

At first, it would appear as though Marquette has all the makings of a rival, much like Pittsburgh was at the beginning of the century before bottoming out, but again, the Golden Eagles have had far less success against the Huskies than you might think. Since Dan Hurley’s arrival, Shaka Smart has a pair of 2023 victories, one home win, and a two-point victory in the Big East semis, while Connecticut has won all eight other match-ups, including the Big East Tournament Final in 2024. Marquette still has the opportunity to scratch and claw their way into making this a rivalry, particularly with the Top 10 team they have at the moment, but there is unquestionably still work to be done.

And so, we are back to the original Big East crew. Georgetown? Hurley has never lost to the Hoyas. St Johns? The Huskies have won six of the last seven in the series. Plus, it’s difficult to consider a team your rival when you literally take over their arena every time you visit. It’s called Storrs South for a reason. What about Providence? Don’t make me laugh. Villanova is the only program with the credentials to genuinely refer to UConn as their rival in 2025. This is a team with a storied championship history both in the Big East and on a National stage. Still, Connecticut has won five of the last seven in this series, Jay Wright is retired, and Dan Hurley’s “Better get us now” promise went from “it’s coming” to “it here” in the blink of an eye. The Wildcats did own the conference while the Huskies were on an American vacation, though, so we’ll let them call themselves our only worthy, current rivals…for now.

Chris Smith is a regular contributor to the Hoops Capital of the World. You can find him on X @BadChoiceMilk.