College Sports
The Huskies beat Alabama 86-72 in the semifinals on Saturday night.
GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — Connecticut has blown through the NCAA Tournament again to reach college basketball’s final night, this time with a chance to claim the men’s game’s first repeat championship in 17 years.
The final test is facing a Purdue team that spent an entire season proving it had recovered from one of the rarest of NCAA Tournament upsets.
The Huskies and Boilermakers are ready for Monday night’s championship game, a matchup set when Purdue ended North Carolina State’s wild March Madness run followed by UConn pushing past Alabama in Saturday night’s second semifinal.
There’s plenty of history on the line with the matchup, along with a pairing of marquee big men in Purdue’s 7-foot-4 Zach Edey — the two-time Associated Press national player of the year — and UConn’s 7-2 Donovan Clingan.
The Huskies (36-3) won their fifth championship last season, winning six straight games by at least 13 points each time. And in a been-here-before moment, UConn earned its title-game ticket by beating the Crimson Tide 86-72 for its closest margin thus far in this year’s tournament and its 11th straight tournament win dating back to last year.
One more win would put this year’s No. 1 overall tournament seed in rare company, becoming the first team to win a repeat NCAA title since Florida did it in 2006 and 2007. It would also make the Huskies only the third to do so since UCLA’s run of seven straight championships under John Wooden from 1967-73, the other being Duke in 1991 and 1992 under Mike Krzyzewski.
For Purdue, the story isn’t one of…