By admin 
UNCASVILLE, Conn. – As time ran out on UConn’s 20-point win over Syracuse Tuesday, the first action of the men’s basketball season filmed before a live audience, there were some feelings of melancholia over days gone by.
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Those were the days, when the Huskies and the Orange played at least once a year to decide something, a pivotal regular season game, maybe a Big East Tournament title at Madison Square Garden, maybe needed six overtime periods to decide it.
“I love this, I grew up in this, this is what I played in,” said Gerry McNamara, Syracuse’s new head coach, after UConn’s 72-52 victory at Mohegan Sun Arena. “This game means a lot to me. I felt when I was a player in the Big East, it brought the best out of both programs.”
UConn’s first rise to national prominence began with big wins over Syracuse, an upset at The Dome during Jim Calhoun’s second season that helped get the Huskies in the NIT, and the Big East final two years later during ‘The Dream Season.’ Their time together in the Big East, from 1979-2013, created memories for both sides that never fade.
What faded was the relationship, forced to break up by the fortunes of college athletics. When the original Big East was dispersing in 2013, and they played for the last time as conference rivals in Hartford, Jim Boeheim noted that rivalries were inextricably tied to conferences. Syracuse could play UConn, St. John’s, Georgetown, et al, as nonconference opponents, but it would never be the same. He was right.
McNamara played for Syracuse from 2003-2006, then was a grad manager during the 2009, six-OT thriller in New York, an assistant coach and associate head coach. He left for Siena, proving he could be a head coach, and was summoned to try to rebuild the program after the hard times of recent years.
UConn’s Dan Hurley is far more strategic than sentimental in assembling his nonconference season, weighing the risk of losing vs. the reward of winning a game with an eye on NCAA Tournament seeding. (This is why we don’t see a UConn-Yale matchup.) So Hurley is not one to restore a rivalry just for the sake of nostalgia, but he is willing to take a leap and restore this one; he’s banking on McNamara’s chances to get Syracuse back to national relevance.
“It’s always pretty cool when UConn plays Syracuse,” Hurley said. “Hopefully, moving forward we’re able to find a way to get it on the regular season schedule. Gerry is one of the best young coaches in the sport and he’s going to have the program back to where the program was. So we’re excited, hopefully we’re able to move this from an exhibition to regular season in the future.”
Hurley’s first notable win at UConn in 2018 was a big upset over Syracuse in a one-off neutral site game at Madison Square Garden. Syracuse was still Syracuse then, while UConn, in The American, was just starting its rebuild after two losing seasons. This was the first sign that “it was coming.” Few imagined the programs were actually passing on escalators that night, that the Orange’s move to the power conference would turn out as it has for basketball.
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Yet here we are. UConn has reached the national championship game three of the last four years, winning twice, while Syracuse has not even made the Field of 68 over the last five.
“There have been discussions, between our people and their people,” Hurley said. “Whether it’s home-and-home, or at MSG. For us, now that a guy like Gerry is there, the program is going to elevate now as every season goes by and it will be a game that we’ll want to play. Maybe the last couple of years it hasn’t been a game that would have made much sense for us, based on where (Syracuse has) been, but I’ve got a pretty good idea of where this thing’s going to go with Gerry coaching.”
In this first meet-up, McNamara, who won 23 games and led Siena to the NCAA’s Round of 64 last season, was searching for positives. There were signs, Hurley thought, that this could be a vintage defensive UConn team. It was tied at 26 late in the first half, then the Huskies outscoring Syracuse 46-26 the rest of the way, holding the Orange for the game to 30.6 percent shooting from the floor and prompting 16 turnovers, cashed in for 19 points. Among UConn newcomers, Na’jai Hines showed he can be a worthy successor to the program’s recent line of pro-caliber centers, and Nik Khamenia, who will be asked to fill iconic Alex Karaban’s shoes, showed off the 3-point touch and all-around game to do it. That’s about what we learned. No real red flags out there for UConn.
McNamara seemed fine with playing an exhibition game against UConn every year as a progress report for his program renovation, but sounded as if he’d just as soon wait to play the Huskies in a regular season game until he gets further along. Whenever they play, it would be a credibility boost for Syracuse and as the 6,862 fans began leaving the arena, momentum for it picked up.
“Obviously, what Danny has done has brought them back to where we want to go,” McNamara said. “That’s the vision of what we want to try to accomplish here for the next phase. So getting a chance to play against them, I l love their staff, I’ve known them for a long time. It’s hard for me to root for a UConn team, but I find myself doing it because of the people that are on the sidelines. So I think both of us really appreciate both schools’ head-to-head competitive juices, putting these two teams together because I think the fan bases enjoy it. We’re going to continue to get better, they’re at that point, but, yeah it’s been a lot of fun and hopefully we can get down here and do this again, and as we move forward, doing it every year.”
UConn and Syracuse have caught up with each other on the football field, playing overtime games the past two seasons in the home-and-home series. They’ve met a few times in women’s basketball, a few more times at Gampel Pavilion in March than the ‘Cuse folks would have liked.
In the larger picture, it can’t hurt UConn to re-establish relations with old frenemies now in the ACC, if you know what we mean. Now, as Hurley has been building a nonconference schedule designed to bring March Madness to Connecticut three months ahead of schedule, the time is ripe to put bracketology and analytics aside, extend a hand to a fallen rival and restore this rivalry it’s old fierceness for future generations.
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This story was originally published October 15, 2026 at 2:44 AM.