College Basketball Needs to Be a Bigger Part of Connecticut’s Identity

What are some of the things you think about when you hear Connecticut? The Constitution, or Nutmeg State? Pizza? Steamed cheeseburgers? Do you ever think about the fact that over the past few decades, we've had two of the best college basketball teams in the country? It's way beyond time to make University of Connecticut basketball a bigger part of Connecticut's overall identity.

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The men's basketball team at UConn has just climbed to the #1 spot in the latest AP rankings for the first time since 2009. Those were the dominant days of Hasheem Thabeet. But, think about it, the men's team has flirted with the AP Top 25 almost every season since the days of Donny and Donyell Marshall and Khalid El-Amin. At the same time, the UConn women's basketball team has had way more victories and National Championships. Storrs, Connecticut has overshadowed Boston, New York City, Providence, and all of the assorted athletic conferences spread out across New England as the epicenter of college basketball.

Why isn't Connecticut thought of by the general population as one of the states that produces the best basketball teams in the country? UConn's success over the past 30 years with both programs is absolutely on the same level as the traditional basketball player-manufacturing states of North Carolina, Indiana, and California's Gonzaga and UCLA.

The next time asks, tell them that Connecticut is where the best young male and female basketball players in the world come to prove that they are the best. Isn't that better than 'The Nutmeg State"?