The athletic department relied less on institutional support, according to the report, receiving $31.7 million, a decrease of nearly 32% from two years ago. It cited “substantial” increases in ticket sales and fundraising for the increase in self-generated revenue, along with a decrease in personnel costs.

UConn said the athletic department was able to self-generate nearly 60% of its own revenue for the second straight year, up from 44% two years ago. The athletic department generated $16.1 million in ticket sales, up from $12.9 million a year ago. It also received $26 million in donations.

The school believes that its athletic success has made a “significant” contribution to the state’s economy, with the report estimating the total economic output to be more than $242.7 million. The university said the number represents over a 700% return on direct institutional support in back-to-back years.

The athletic department said university support has helped fuel “outstanding academic and athletic achievements,” with 76% of student-athletes earning a 3.0 or better GPA during the spring term, including 82 student-athletes earning a 4.0, 100 student-athletes named to the Dean’s List in their respective school or college, 30 student-athletes named New England Scholars, eight student-athletes named Babbidge Scholars and a 92% Graduation Success Rate.

UConn won its sixth national championship in men’s basketball this season and 11 conference titles. It was also one of seven schools nationally to rank in the top-25 in both the men’s (3rd) and women’s (24th) Capital One Cup final standings.

Coach K serves as a special advisor to the NBA, he’s still involved as an ambassador at Duke, and he hosts his own radio show on Sirius XM.

Krzyzewski knows better than anyone about the changes college sports have seen in recent years, and he’s got a few ideas for how his former conference, the ACC, can stay competitive.

“I’d like to see something innovative, like, I’d like to see the ACC and the Big East talk, and form a mega basketball conference,” Krzyzewski said on his radio show last week. “People are talking about a mega football conference eventually. Imagine if we had the Big East.

“And you know what? Connecticut would have the opportunity to play football in our league. We need to at least talk about stuff like that. Imagine our footprint? Come on. And the quality of basketball to go along with the tradition of basketball in our conference.”

The ACC currently has 18 member schools in basketball, with all but Notre Dame also playing football in the conference. The Irish are technically independent in football, but have a scheduling agreement with the ACC where the team plays five games against league opponents each season.

The Big East has 11 basketball-playing members, with UConn being the only one that plays FBS football. A merger would theoretically create a 29-team mega-basketball league, and add UConn to an 18-team football conference.

Krzyzewski didn’t go into detail about how scheduling would work in a mega-conference, but regardless, the idea is sure to make headlines.

“When I first met him, I was like, ‘how is this kid going to play in this league?'” Cavanaugh said. “I went to Vancouver and watched him play and he was a good player, but I saw him off the ice and said, ‘he’s going to get killed in this league. There’s nothing to him.”

True, Schandor, 5 feet 9 and 175, is a bit undersized and, even at 24 could pass for a member of the 1980s Hollywood “Brat Pack” as easily as a fit for one of the toughest hockey conferences in America. But he was willing to bet on himself, coming to UConn on a partial scholarship, and now as a grad student and a captain, and he is two points away from becoming the program’s most productive player since it joined Hockey East in 2014.

“My coach in Surrey (in the British Columbia League), Cam Keith, the year before I came here, said the reason he loved me so much was, ‘man, you just seem to figure it out everywhere you go,'” Schandor said. “‘No matter who is betting against you, or if the odds are against you, you just find a way to get it done.’ I can’t credit anyone but the staff here at UConn for getting me in the physical condition to be able to go and compete.'”

And this past weekend, as Schandor passed 100 career points with a goal in each game and assists on three others in the Huskies’ home-and-home sweep of New Hampshire, Cavanaugh called him “the epitome of a UConn hockey player.”

“The way he conducts himself off ice,” Cavanaugh said, “since the day he got here, the fact he could have gone anywhere in the country for a fifth year — anybody would have taken him — but he wanted to come back here. He’s loyal. He’s the type of kid that’s going to be super successful in life when hockey is over for him because he just does everything the right way.”

The Huskies (11-8-1) are 11th in the PairWise ratings, which is critical to gaining an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament, and 6-6-1 in Hockey East, which has all 11 of its teams in the top 27. They face a big test with two games at Maine, No. 3, next weekend, then play Quinnipiac in the CT Ice Tournament on Jan. 24. All seven of UConn’s games in February are at home, either the XL Center of the Toscano Family Ice Forum on campus, where 2,691 nearly filled the rink Saturday, even with students still out on semester break.

So things are looking up for UConn men’s hockey at the moment, and reaching new, high ground is what brought Schandor, who has his degree in finance, back to play one more year of hockey and pursue a certificate in leadership and public policy.

“Finish what I started here,” Schandor said. “(Defenseman John Spetz) and I both came back for a reason, and that’s to get this program to the next level and to a place we think it should be on a consistent basis. With that mission in mind, we worked all summer, trying to establish a strong culture that can be carried on for years to come. This is not a one-and-done deal, this is a culture we’re trying to establish for the long term for this program.”

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Finishing off a sweep in Hockey East play is the latest statement that this UConn team could be different. The Huskies have crashed the boards, such as in 2022 when they reach the conference final, but have yet to break through to hockey’s March Madness.

Schandor played in that high-water mark game at TD Garden, the 2-1 OT loss to UMass. By then he was a sophomore and on full scholarship.

“My exit interview my first year with Coach Cav,” Schandor remembered, “he looked down at the table, took his glasses off, looked at me and said, ‘yeah, Huddy, we knew you were going to be pretty good here. We didn’t know you were going to be that good.’ And they took care of me from then on. I don’t think I’d have it any other way. Coming in at 50 percent, humble as can be, ready to just put your head down and work. It’s crazy, what happens when you do that.”

Grinding his way up from the fourth line to centering the second line, Schandor has six goals and 12 assists this season, 33 and 70 across 142 career games, one point behind former teammate Jachym Kondelik (2018-22), now playing professionally in Europe, for most points in UConn’s Hockey East era. More than 3,100 miles from home in North Vancouver, Schandor is leaving his mark.

“I knew a couple of guys here who were from (Western Canada) and they brought me up well,” Schandor said. “Jonny Evans, Carter Turnbull, Carter Berger and those guys. Guys like Jachym Kondelik were so important in making all of us from all over feel like family and grow it into what it has become, a wide-spread, connected family.

“Specifically this year, we’re preaching a sense of family is the most important thing. No one is bigger or better than anyone here. We all wake up and we’re all just a man. If you know the story, Marcus Aurelius had a guy follow him around and after his successes, after his failures, he would remind him, ‘you’re just a man, no greater or worse than anyone else.’ So with that mantra this year, we’ve been able to establish a strong family base where guys truly care for one another.”

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Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 A.D., was a stoic philosopher, preaching the four cardinal virtues of every day life: prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. But how good was he at killing penalties?

The Huskies allowed two power-play goals on Saturday, but scored their seventh shorthanded goal of the season, an unassisted score from Tabor Heaslip in the second period that made it 3-0. UConn leads the nation in “shorties,” which says something about the collective personality that is emerging.

“That’s wild, that’s crazy,” Schandor said. “We’re rallying around special teams. We’re a hyper-aggressive penalty kill, we’re going to get in your face and make you make high-end plays consistently. If you can, props to you. If you can’t, we’re coming right at you. I feel great about where we’re at right now.”

Still, without membership in a power football conference, there remains a wide gap between UConn and the most valuable athletic programs in the country, according to CNBC.

The Huskies came in at No. 71 in CNBC’s ranking of the most valuable programs in college sports, released last week.

The top programs, as you would expect, are from the Big Ten and SEC, due to those conference’s massive media rights deals.

No. 1 Ohio State is valued at $1.32 billion, followed by Texas ($1.28B), Texas A&M ($1.26B), Michigan ($1.06B) and Alabama ($978M).

Notre Dame ($969M), Georgia ($950M), Nebraska ($943M), Tennessee ($940M) and Oklahoma ($928M) round out the top ten.

UConn was valued at $178 million, with $93 million in revenue, according to the Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for the 2023 fiscal year.

The school ranks just below the University of Central Florida ($181M valuation, $85M in revenue), a former American Athletic Conference opponent, which moved to the Big 12 last year. It’s just ahead of Boise State ($171M valuation, $61M in revenue), East Carolina ($153M, $63M) and the University of South Florida ($150M, $71M).

The top 13 schools on CNBC’s list all brought in more than $200 million in revenue in 2023, with Ohio State leading the way at $280 million.

You can see the full list here.

But Mahoney struggled a little midseason and did not play in two games – an Oct. 3 win over Providence and an Oct. 6 loss to Creighton.

Mahoney, a graduate student who is studying for her doctorate in chemical engineering, rebounded and came back in the next game, a 3-0 win over Marquette. Currently, she’s been one of the keys to the Huskies’ six-game win streak, including their first Big East tournament championship since 2004 and their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2016.

Mahoney had a season-high seven saves in the 2-1 overtime win over Xavier in the Big East championship game and six saves in a 2-1 first round NCAA Tournament win over Rutgers Saturday.

UConn (14-4-4) will face No. 3 Stanford, which lost to Florida State in the College Cup final last year and won national championships in 2017 and 2019, Friday at 4 p.m. in a second-round NCAA Tournament game in Fayetteville, Ark. Stanford (14-4-1) started off the season 10-1 but ended the regular season on a 3-3-1 note.

Last year, UConn lost in the Big East Tournament semifinals and did not get an NCAA Tournament bid. That sparked the Huskies’ run this season.

“We got disrespected,” said UConn coach Margaret Rodriguez, who took over the program in 2018 after long-time coach Len Tsantiris retired. “We were on the bubble and didn’t get in and it kind of fueled us. We were not leaving it up to the committee this year to not let us in. We took matters into our own hands.

“Then we got into the NCAAs and it was: ‘We have to reframe our goal now. Our goal is to advance.’”

UConn had lost to Creighton and Georgetown and tied Xavier 1-1 during the regular season. The Huskies beat all three, including Xavier in the final, in the Big East tournament.

“It was like a revenge tour,” Mahoney said. “Redemption. We knew those were games we wanted back. We didn’t play to our full potential, and we had a second opportunity, and we weren’t going to let it slip away. We knew we needed to win the Big East to get where we wanted to get for NCAAs.”

Mahoney said her struggles in the midseason were mental, but she was confident the team could carry on.

“I knew even though I wasn’t at the best of my ability at the time, I knew I had people around me who could step in and work hard and they were 100 percent at the time, and I wasn’t,” she said. “Everyone goes through their struggles once in a while but it’s a testament to how you can bounce back and how you can learn and grow from things that you may be struggling with.

“I’m almost at a different place mentally. I’m in a place, I’m here to play, I want to keep playing and I want to do it with this team.”

UConn’s defense has been solid as well, allowing two goals in the last five games.

Lucy Cappadona, another graduate student who plays defense, left the Big East championship game on crutches after an opponent slammed into her knee. It seemed serious but it was diagnosed as a bone bruise. Doctors still didn’t think Cappadona would be able to play against Rutgers, Rodriguez said. If she did, maybe she would only play limited minutes.

Not only did Cappadona play – 90 minutes – she scored the game-winning goal against Rutgers off a corner kick.

“That just sums her up,” Rodriguez said. “You have to rip her off the field.”

That’s how it’s been for the Huskies lately.

“For us to have gone this far – I don’t know many people who thought we’d get this far,” Mahoney said. “But we have that belief and drive. We’re not done yet.”

The Huskies (17-3), the No. 3 overall seed, will play UMass on Friday at noon. If they win, they would play Syracuse or Harvard on Sunday at 1 p.m. for the chance to go to the Final Four in Ann Arbor, Mich. UConn defeated UMass 1-0 during the regular season.

Fairfield (12-8), the MAAC champion, will also represent the state in the tournament, with a first-round game at home against Delaware on Wednesday. The winner of that game plays the No.1 overall seed, North Carolina, in Chapel Hill on Friday.

UConn won the NCAA Tournament in 1981 and 1985 under coach Diane Wright, 2013, 2014 and 2017 under Nancy Stevens. Paul Caddy, who succeeded Stevens, is in his fifth season.

Huskies, Stags also in women’s soccer tourney

UConn and Fairfield both won automatic berths in the NCAA women’s soccer tournament as well. The Huskies will face No. 6 seed Rutgers on Saturday at 5 p.m. ET in New Jersey. The winner of that game will face the winner of UC-Santa Barbara and No. 3 seed Stanford in the second round.

Fairfield will travel to Georgetown to face the sixth-seeded Hoyas also on Saturday, at noon. The winner will face either 3-seed Iowa or Missouri State.

Taylor, a sophomore, took a pass from teammate Chioma Okafor and ended the game in the 108th minute, giving the Huskies their first conference title since 2004 and their first bid to the NCAA Tournament since 2016.

The Championship Moment! pic.twitter.com/m9IyQSWQ7V

— UConn Women's Soccer (@UConnWSOC) November 10, 2024

A couple of hours later, UConn’s field hockey team also won the Big East title, beating Temple, 1-0, in Providence as Julia Bressler scored off a penalty stroke in the third quarter. The top-seeded Huskies defeated Liberty and Temple in the tournament and also await their NCAA assignment, to come Sunday night. UConn will be trying for its sixth national championship in field hockey.

Neither UConn (17-3) nor Temple generated any dangerous scoring opportunities in the first half. In the third quarter, freshman Sophie Perschk, who scored in the Huskies’ semifinal win over Liberty, fired a shot that was stopped by an illegal defensive maneuver, resulting in the penalty stoke. Bressler, a junior, scored her 18th career goal to give the Huskies the lead. Their defense stopped several Temple penalty corner opportunities in the fourth quarter to close out the game. Keeper Natalie Mckenna made three stops as the Owls had a 9-5 edge in shots, 5-1 in penalty corners.

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The women’s soccer team, which won its last two regular season game to get the fifth seed in the Big East tournament, beat Creighton on the road and stunned Georgetown in the semifinals, both by 2-0 scores. On Sunday, the Huskies were outshot 25-13, including 8-4 in shots on goal. Xavier led 1-0 at the half, with a goal by Samantha Wiehe, but UConn tied it in the 50th minute as Laci Lewis, senior defender from West Haven and St. Joseph-Trumbull, scored an unassisted goal.

After the teams went into a second overtime period, Okafor, the Huskies’ top scorer, who draws a lot of attention, dished the ball off to Taylor, who made a perfect shot over Xavier’s Maria Galley to win the game. UConn keeper Kaitlyn Mahoney made seven saves.

She’s coached for 25 years, has had a lot of great players but says this athlete, who will play at UConn next year, is the most skilled ever

The men’s soccer team lost 2-0 in the Big East Tournament final on Saturday. They will await their fate during the NCAA selection show on Monday at 1:30 p.m.

When Cheshire’s Jack Loura passed up the chance to play soccer elsewhere and made an academics-driven choice to come to UConn, that’s how he stayed in touch with the game, with fellow students clustered behind the opposition net at Morrone Stadium.

“My sophomore fall, I was at every game,” Loura said. “I was behind the goal, chirping at the other goalkeeper with the ‘goal patrol’ at the time.”

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Due to the pandemic, there were no tryouts when he first arrived. Loura played the following semester with a club team on campus, and he decided to give it a shot. He reached out to Chris Gbandi, the new head coach.

“Is that where he started? That’s amazing. I didn’t even know he was in the goal patrol,” Gbandi said. “He e-mailed us, and we get a lot of them, so we said, ‘just send us a highlight tape,’ and he did. He’s a lefty, it looked like he could move, so you know what? We’ll take a look at him.”

Loura spent a couple of weeks in the spring of 2022 training with the Huskies, and the experienced players, the scholarship players, like Aiden Cavanaugh and Scott Testori, treated the walk-on as if he belonged, as if he had every right to be a Husky. His confidence grew, but when camp broke up, Gbandi told him he didn’t have a spot for him … yet.

Then came an injury or two, a need for a center back arose. When the 2022 season started, Loura had made it from the student section to the starting lineup.

“It’s crazy to think about it,” Loura said. “The second game that year, after school started, playing against Holy Cross, packed out stadium, playing in front of 6,000 fans. And to know where I came from, freshman year not on a team, sophomore year on a club team, to playing at one of the highest levels in America? Yeah.”

Loura, 21, now a grad student, is one of the UConn captains — anchoring the best defensive team in the nation — as the Huskies (8-3-6) play at Providence in the Big East quarterfinals on Saturday night. This is it, any game could be the last in college for Loura.

“It comes down to his mentality and his work ethic, what he’s made himself into,” Gbandi said. “We’re all proud of him, and he’s such a good leader. His demeanor, people kind of gravitate towards him. He’s one of those guys who is a bright individual and he can talk to anybody about anything. That’s what makes him so unique.”

Loura, 6 feet 1, 185 pounds, was introduced to the game by his father David, who coached Jack and his sisters, Bridget and Kaitlyn. He was also a captain at Cheshire High, where he had 19 goals and 20 assists, and played for the Farmington-based FSA club. He had chances to play at lower-D-1, or D-II or III programs, but for a soccer player in Connecticut, UConn, with its two NCAA championships, represents an ideal and a tradition in soccer, just as it would for other state athletes in other sports.

“It’s an unforgettable experience and it helps you grow in so many ways,” Loura said. “I came here as a regular student and you don’t understand how much time you spend in this facility, between film, lifting, training on the field, games, traveling, you spend so much time with these guys and you build a connection with every single one of them.”

He scored his first college goal in the 2024 season opener against Stonehill, and picked up an assist against Villanova, but he has taken only seven shots in his 24 games for the Huskies. His job is to be the quarterback of the defense, a glue guy.

“It’s a lot more communication and leadership than other positions on the team,” Loura said. “Because you are one of the players who sees the entire field and you’ve got to help your midfielders both defensively and offensively, talk to your outside backs. Some distribution because we build out of the back, and obviously you’ve got to try to prevent the other team from scoring, making sure you’re marking up their strikers in the box.”

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And that last part has been the Huskies’ signature strength. They have allowed only 17 goals this season, leading all NCAA Division I programs with a .647 goals-against average. Freshman goalkeeper Max Kirkvliet, a candidate for Big East rookie of the year, is a big part of that. So even if the Huskies, with seven clean sheets and five scoreless draws, go into the conference tournament as the No. 7 seed, they’re probably not a team any opponent is anxious to face.

“We’re just a really hard-working group,” Loura said. “In the past we may have had more talented guys in a couple of spots, but we just work so hard for each other this year and that’s part of the reason our defense is so good. We work as a team, we get 10 guys behind the ball, we’ve been a hard team to score against and that’s the reason we’ve only lost three games to this point.”

Loura earned his undergrad degree in accounting and is in the graduate program for financial technology. When this season is over, he hopes to get a chance with a United Soccer League program — just in case, you know,  Hartford Athletic is looking for a left-footed center back who’s willing to start anywhere and work his way up, who doesn’t take “no” as a final answer. If going from the bleachers to the captaincy tells you anything about Jack Loura, it tells you that.

“I probably wouldn’t have believed you if you told me that, but I never really gave up on myself,” he said. “I always wanted to play on the team and keep reaching out to the coaches. Being the captain, starting every game this year, I probably wouldn’t believe you if you said that.”

“Tim was UConn and UConn was Tim,” said Jim Calhoun, men’s basketball coach from 1986-2012. “After his wife, Diane, and his family, it was all UConn for Tim, 24/7.”

Tolokan, a Rhode Island native, was the sports editor of the Norwich Bulletin before joining UConn’s athletic communications in 1980. During the 1980s, when nearly every local newspaper in the state was independently owned, UConn basketball had the largest contingent of print reporters in the country, as many as 14 at home and road games, in addition to the local TV and radio reporters. Tolokan managed the large group and helped foster good professional interaction between coaches, athletes and Connecticut’s media.

A member of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Coordination Committee from 1984 to 2001, Tolokan’s work at UConn was respected throughout the country. He earned several awards, culminating with his induction to the College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame in 2024.

Tolokan mentored hundreds of UConn students who went into the communications industry, and as the school’s athletic communications department grew with the success and popularity of many other sports.

Tolokan became a historian of UConn sports, becoming curator of the Husky Heritage Sports Museum on the Storrs campus. He retired from his full-time position in 2009, but continued part-time as a special assistant to the AD until 2018, consulting on projects and innovations.

He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Diane (Lemoine) of South Kingstown, R.I., his sister Patricia of Windham, brother Toby (Mary) of Indianapolis, his nieces Lindsey Lemoine and Julia Lemoine; and nephews John Tolokan, Alek Tolokan, and John Lemoine.

The Huskies (5-0-1) are back in the United Soccer Coaches poll for the first time since 2019, checking in at No. 25 in the rankings.

UConn has defeated Stonehill, NJIT, Central Connecticut State, Siena and Dartmouth so far this season, and drew with Long Island.

The Huskies start Big East play with a game at DePaul on Friday.

On the rise

Huskies are in the top 25 for the first time since 2019! pic.twitter.com/IvWSiUMV2K

— UConn Men's Soccer (@UConnMSOC) September 17, 2024

After finishing 9-8-1 and losing in the second round of the Big East tournament last season, UConn was picked to finish fourth in the Big East’s East Division in the preseason coaches’ poll.

Midfielder Sabri Hanni, a redshirt freshman from Paris, France, leads the team with four goals so far this season. Senior forward Scott Testori of Madison has racked up a goal and four assists, and Michael Suski of Avon and Loomis Chaffee has scored twice and ass