Questions posed to the UConn men Sunday night in their latest locker room celebration ranged from references to “Shipping Up To Boston,” to requests to try their hand at a Boston accent.
Not many takers. Players seemed unfamiliar with the Dropkick Murphy’s thunderous recording. And they waited until Tuesday, when Jim Calhoun addressed the team in practice, to become reacquainted with an authentic Bah-ston accent.
Though UConn Nation, theoretically, stretches that far, its eyes have long been trained to look South toward New York. References to New York as “Storrs South” or Storrs as “The Sixth Borough” have made the internet rounds for years.
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Perhaps the best known UConn fan in Boston is a fictional character, Rebecca Howe, played by Kirstie Alley in the 1980s sitcom “Cheers.” Now the Huskies will be playing in TD Garden, the historical successor to the famed Boston Garden, home of the Celtics, for the East Regionals starting with the Round-of-16 game against San Diego State on Thursday at 7:39 p.m. Here is a chance to extend its brand to the north and east.
By Sunday, if UConn is playing in the Elite Eight against Illinois or Iowa State, maybe the could start calling it “Sto-No?”
“I think we’re going to have some really, really insane UConn crowds,” coach Dan Hurley said. “I think it’s going to be much louder there than it was here. I get the feeling that a lot of our fans just assumed that we’d get out of (Brooklyn) and will be waiting for us in Boston.”
Historically, many of UConn’s signature moments have come in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, in the Big East, NIT and NCAA Tournaments, where they upset Iowa State and Michigan State in the way to the 2014 title. This month, the Huskies won the Big East tournament there, and the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Huskies fans in Boston have, actually, been waiting a long time for an opportunity such as this. UConn has played hockey and football at Fenway Park more recently than the men’s basketball team has appeared at the TD Garden.
But UConn’s roots up through New England go back further, to the days when the Yankee Conference and ECAC created rivalries with the schools in the Boston area. From Northeastern, UConn lured Calhoun, native Bostonian, in 1986 to come and build the program into what it is today.
Here at UConn’s send off to Boston outside the Werth Champions Center.
Nice crowd starting to build up out here 👀 pic.twitter.com/loG2eAqG4e
— Evan Rodriguez (@EvanRodriguezCT) March 26, 2024
“We’re trying like crazy not to be ‘That small town between New York and Boston,’” Calhoun said. “This is another chance to show we’re the place where the best basketball is. The minute we get on that floor, they’ll see it. For us who grew up there, it’s a special place.”
Among well-known UConn names, Karl Hobbs came from Boston, as did Shabazz Napier, Dee Rowe from Worcester, Mass., and Toby Kimball from Framingham. Current standout Alex Karaban is from Southborough, 28 miles to the west. Though UConn recruits nationally, and often emphasizes the New York to Philadelphia corridor, where Hurley and Kamani Young have ties, assistant Tom Moore, a Boston University grad from Millbury, Mass., keeps the pipeline to New England open.
But the Huskies have had few occasions to play in the main Boston areas.
UConn last played at TD Garden in Dec. 2, 2007, a nonconference game against Gonzaga, billed as The Hartford Hall of Fame Showcase before about 18,000, the Zags winning a close game. Boston College hosted UConn in the old Boston Garden on Jan. 27, 1987, a notable game during Calhoun’s first season. The Huskies lost two of their top players, Phil Gamble and Cliff Robinson, to academic ineligibility, but pulled what at the time was a big upset, a first sign of turning the corner.
Between 1976-79, an event known as the Colonial Classic was staged at the old Garden, meant to be a basketball version of college hockey’s Beanpot, and UConn was invited to play in 1978 and 79. The Huskies lost to Holy Cross and Boston College in ’78, defeated Holy Cross, despite 46 points from Ronnie Perry, then lost to BC in ’79, and the event didn’t draw well.
And though records are spotty with regards to venues, that appears to be the extent of UConn’s history in the Boston Garden, which was open for business from 1928-98, the Fleet Center and TD Garden. Holy Cross played home games there in the 1940s, but UConn did not play them. The Huskies did play Holy Cross at Boston Arena, now Matthews Arena at Northeastern, in February 1952 and the other Boston teams at campus arenas.
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But Boston, traditionally considered a pro sports town, has rarely been home to major college basketball events, nor gone wild over them.
“When I was at Northeastern,” Calhoun said, “The joke was that Rick Pitino (at Boston University) and I hated each other because we were fighting to be No 9 in an eight-team town.”
As fans make their way to Boston via the Mass Pike or Amtrak, one solid block of Boston fans will be coming from nearby Southborough. Karaban saw a lot of Celtics games there and has had success on its iconic parquet floor, a feature from the original Garden.
“When I was at Algonquin, I played a high school game there and we won. AAU-wise, we won games there, too,” Karaban said. “I haven’t lost a game at TD Garden yet, knock on wood. It’s definitely a special place. I wouldn’t want to be there with any other guys. Just to have two opportunities to play in TD Garden will be special.”