Connecticut starting March Madness repeat bid in dominant form should scare rest of field

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is down to 16 teams, but once again it feels like it’s UConn versus the field. 

That’s what happened last year as the Huskies tore through March, dominating all six opponents on their way to a national championship. What UConn did this weekend looked like a carbon copy — only this time, everyone sees it coming.

Yes, the competition will get tougher as UConn advances to the East Regional, where a potential Elite Eight game against No. 2 seed Iowa State or No. 3 seed Illinois could be one of the most exciting matchups of the tournament. 

But at this point, the distance UConn has created between itself and everyone else almost seems as big as what women’s basketball dealt with when Geno Auriemma won four consecutive national titles between 2013 and 2016. 

How in the world do you beat this team? 

FOLLOW THE MADNESS: NCAA basketball bracket, scores, schedules, teams and more.

UConn’s ruthless efficiency was on full display Sunday when it smoked Northwestern, 75-58, in a game that laughably non-competitive from the first minute.

Keep in mind, Northwestern isn't some upstart mid-major that was just happy to win its first-round game against Florida Atlantic. This is a team that finished tied for third in the Big Ten and beat a whole bunch of NCAA men's tournament teams this season including Dayton, Michigan State, Nebraska, Illinois and Purdue. 

Northwestern is good. And yet UConn made those guys look like the junior varsity — the high school junior varsity. 

At this point, it seems pretty clear that UConn coach Dan Hurley has pulled off something that really shouldn't be possible in this transient era of college basketball: He built an even better team this year than the one that won the national title last year with an average victory margin of 20 points per game. 

It doesn’t mean UConn will be able to finish the job again — plenty of great, dynastic teams have stumbled close to the finish line because it's just dang hard to do — but no team has looked this ready to go back-to-back since Florida pulled it off in 2006 and 2007. 

Depending on how the numbers shake out overnight, UConn will go into next week’s Sweet 16 games with either the No. 1 or No. 2 offense in the KenPom.com efficiency ratings and a defense just inside the top 10. That essentially tracks with what the Huskies were last season when they were No. 3 on offense and No. 7 on defense at the end of their championship run. 

But their aura goes beyond the numbers. Everything UConn does is so precise, so crisp, so terrifying that the question I’ve got at the moment is how this team lost three games. 

And I'm only halfway kidding. 

When UConn kicks it into postseason gear, as they started to do at the Big East tournament, it’s special to watch. The level of activity and movement on offense, the purpose in their passing and their ability to just get the shot they want nearly all the time is not the norm for college basketball. 

It’s special, and it doesn't even feel like a bad shooting night or the typical variance you can see in a one-and-done tournament is going to matter all that much. In fact, in their two games this weekend, the Huskies made just 12-of-46 threes and didn't even come close to being threatened. If anything, it suggests they still have another level they can reach as in the next couple weeks. 

And when you see how Hurley approaches even the smallest dip in intensity or concentration, you can understand why UConn plays the way does it. 

At halftime of the Huskies’ first game Friday against Stetson, he was ready to lay into his team because it gave up a couple easy baskets before it went to the locker room.

“Everything should be automatic this time of year,” he told CBS. “Just defensively, it's human nature I guess, but just to throttle down like that late — that’s not championship level. 

“In this tournament, if you don’t keep everything at the absolute highest level like automatic, every possession, things go bad for you in this tournament. We’ve got to grow up a little bit. The last couple minutes I didn’t like.”

His team was leading 52-19.

Hurley isn’t for everyone. He can come across as a little maniacal, a little arrogant, a little brusque. But at a time when so many coaches are chasing a version of culture that presents well publicly but crumbles at the first sign of adversity, Hurley seems to have this college basketball thing figured out. 

After losing Andre Jackson, Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sang to the NBA, UConn should have taken a step back. Instead, the Huskies look just as good or better — and the only big-time recruit on the roster is freshman Stephon Castle. Tristen Newton, their point guard and the Big East player of the year, transferred from East Carolina for goodness sakes. 

This just isn’t supposed to happen in the modern era of college basketball, but it's happening before our very eyes.

Maybe somebody in this tournament manage to play the game of its life and UConn will have a bad day, ending their back-to-back dreams. But in a sport with inherently unreliable teams, these Huskies seem as solid and bankable as anyone we’ve seen in years. 

And at this point, if they don't win the national championship, it’s going to be a huge shock.