Typically, when a revered coaching genius retires, his school flounders to recover. Especially when he retires shortly before the beginning of a season. UConn will have an easier time than most, because Jim Calhoun’s hand-picked successor was already in the fold, in the guise of former Husky standout Kevin Ollie, who was hired as an assistant coach in 2010. Ollie has no previous head coaching experience, but he has the example of Iowa State’s Fred Hoiberg to point to if anyone doubts him early on.
So, fans were excited to welcome Ollie during UConn’s recent First Night festivities, but the passing of the torch needed one other participant to be official. It’s easy to forget that UConn’s basketball faithful never really got a chance to publicly say goodbye to Jim Calhoun, the architect of the program’s greatness. On Friday night, they got that chance.
Hartford Courant writer Dom Amore was live-tweeting from the event:
It all sounded very nice, very classy and very proper, until Amore dropped this bomb into his timeline:
Of course, he was talking about freshman phenom Omar Calhoun, who bested reigning champ Ryan Boatright to win the First Night dunk contest, but the moment’s frisson of disbelief I felt when reading that tweet, and the mental image it imparted, was epic.
And now I’ve passed that image on to you. That’s how much I love you, CBT nation.