Adama Sanogo is now a UConn legend — and has the national championship ball to prove it

BRIAN HAMILTON • APRIL 4, 2023

HOUSTON — As the next great UConn big man ascended Monday night, bound for a net half-dangling off the NRG Stadium’s north rim, Emeka Okafor paused and held out a hand. The kid from Mali who was a soccer player until he was 15, who didn’t even want to come to America at first, cutting his strand of nylon as midnight struck back east. The ballast for a national champion. The NCAA Tournament’s most outstanding player. Everything the Huskies needed, whenever they needed it.

A sight that defied description. So a gesture had to do.

Adama Sanogo’s moment arrived, and would you look at that?

“Every team needs a dominant big,” Okafor told The Athletic, hovering near the fringes of a celebration with a handful of other program greats on hand for the occasion. “When your team has a dominant big, that team does well. And he’s a testament to that.”

One man standing at the end of the Year of the Big, a fourth double-double in six NCAA Tournament games making a final argument none of the others survived long enough in this tournament to match — while also vaulting Sanogo into the company he’d aimed to keep ever since Okafor visited Storrs over the summer, providing a living and breathing roadmap to who UConn’s center of the present wanted to be. “He’s obviously cemented himself into the pantheon of greatest,” Huskies coach Dan Hurley said. “To have the national championship a souvenir.

As his teammates hugged each other, the 6-foot-9 junior wrapped his arms around that basketball. One more part of this month and this event that Sanogo completely owned. “I needed that ball,” he said, though as the net-cutting continued, it had mysteriously disappeared not simply in what Sanogo does but rather when he does it and how it moors an entire operation. “It takes a lot of weight off our shoulders,” Huskies guard Jordan Hawkins said. “If we just really need a bucket, really bad, we just give him the ball. We’re really lucky to have a guy like that.”

Monday was no different. The Huskies were determined to punish San Diego State early near the basket, and Sanogo delivered by making his first three shots — one as a shoe fell off, it should be noted. He was a plus-11 overall in the first half. His putback of a Tristen Newton miss, meanwhile, ended a 9-0 run by the Aztecs in the second half. He clambered in for an offensive rebound with a little more than two minutes left, getting fouled by a fallen Matt Bradley and sinking two free throws to extend the lead to a more or less impervious 14 points.

DAVID

just puts him in that position in one of the most storied programs in college basketball. He’s an all-time great.”

No wonder Sanogo bounced on his toes as time wound down on a 76-59 win over San Diego State, anxious to fulfill dreams big and small at the horn. This was a small one: A day earlier, Sanogo visualized a fifth national championship for his school and, in turn, securing the game ball for posterity. So the clock ran down and walk-on guard Andrew Hurley spiked the orb on the floor, and Sanogo leaped from the bench area to chase after from his possession. “That’s a ball I want to save for my kids, my grandkids. I needed that ball. I’m definitely keeping it. Definitely.”

The numbers are the numbers: 19.7 points and 11.7 rebounds per night in the NCAA Tournament, making 50 of the 75 shots he attempted from the floor in this event, capping the run with three straight double-doubles in the Elite Eight and Final Four. A sledgehammer to the wall until it crumbled.

Still, UConn might argue there’s a bit of nuance to it. The significance, to them, is

A 240-pound sigh with the ball in his hands. “Just his presence alone set the standard for the team,” Okafor said. “You could see: Everybody looked to go to him. They establish him, and when he’s established, the team flourishes.”

Okafor would know, having been that same force 19 springs prior and now watching as another iteration repeated the steps in his hometown.

He’d come through Storrs in the offseason to catch a glimpse of a promising roster and, naturally, connect with the group and talk about what’s required to

ABOVE: Connecticut celebrates with the NCAA national championship trophy after their win against San Diego State on April 3, 2023, in Houston. DAVID J. PHILLIP / ASSOCIATED PRESS

OPPOSITE: Connecticut players celebrate after the national championship game against San Diego State in the NCAA Tournament on April 3, 2023, in Houston.

BRYNN ANDERSON / ASSOCIATED PRESS