UConn's first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance has been a long time coming

On the morning of Selection Sunday, Mike Cavanaugh found himself scrolling through the previous Division I men’s hockey champions. He came across Providence in 2015 — UConn’s first year in Hockey East — and looked up its schedule to see how his team fared against the Friars that season.

“It was 10-1,” Cavanaugh said on Sunday. “I remember that game distinctly at Providence. We lost 10-1.”

The upstart Huskies struggled to the finish line that year. Two games after the beatdown by the Friars, they dropped back-to-back games to Northeastern 9-0 then 6-1. The next weekend, UNH swept UConn by a combined score of 10-2. In the playoffs, those same Wildcats earned two easy wins, 5-2 then 2-0.

11 seasons later, the Huskies are no longer the little brother. On Sunday, they made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the 65-year history of the program, getting drawn as a 2-seed in the Allentown Regional where they’ll take on 3-seed Quinnipiac on Friday at 5 p.m.

That February night in Providence a decade ago feels like a long time ago now.

“This morning made me realize how far we've come as a program,” Cavanaugh said.

But of all the years for UConn to break through, it wasn’t supposed to be this one. After a disappointing 2023-24 campaign preceded an exodus of talent, the Huskies looked to be in rebuild mode. Nobody told them, though.

At the beginning of the season, Cavanaugh thought UConn could be in contention for the tournament if its two new goaltenders and new-look defensive corps panned out. Fifth-year assistant captain John Spetz believed the Huskies were capable if they fixed the little things. Check and check.

“Just consistency every day and showing up with the drive and focus to get better,” the blue liner explained. “That's hard sometimes, especially when you get some big wins. You start reading your own press clipping, stuff like that. But we've been keeping each other pretty humble and ready to attack challenge after challenge.”

UConn put together a solid first half before taking off after the Christmas break. Once the calendar flipped to 2025, the Huskies went 14-3-3. The six games they failed to win all came against teams that made the field.

While UConn finally got itself over the hump, it had been close before. The Huskies believed they were worthy of a bid back during the 2020-21 Covid campaign when the 16-team field was selected by a committee instead of the Pairwise.

UConn went just 10-11-2 but played a gauntlet of a schedule that featured a combined seven games against UMass (the eventual national champions) and Boston College (who spent much of the season at No. 1). The Huskies finished fourth in Hockey East and after they were bounced in the quarterfinals of the league tournament, they continued practicing in the hope of making the NCAA Tournament.

But when the bracket was revealed, UConn wasn’t even included among the teams that just missed the cut.

“It was disappointing that day. It was over in the Freitas (Ice Forum) so I remember watching it. I really thought we had a chance to be in,” Cavanaugh said. “It was a crazy year. Our strength of schedule… I thought that was going to factor into it because that year wasn't so much on the numbers. There was some subjective to it. So it was disappointing.”

The next season, the Huskies reached the Hockey East title game and were one way away from earning the automatic bid but fell to UMass in overtime. In 2022-23, they got off to a 9-1-1 start to put themselves in strong position to make it but faded down the stretch and finished 21st in Pairwise. UConn likely needed just a few more wins — Northeastern and Quinnipiac, in particular — to end up inside the cut line.

After being on the wrong side of the bubble year after year, the Huskies didn’t have any anxiety on Sunday. Despite losing to Maine in the Hockey East championship game (and missing out on the league’s automatic bid), they were already comfortably in the field.

UConn had been a virtual lock for a couple months but officially solidified its spot after sweeping Northeastern at the start of March. It ultimately finished seventh in the Pairwise.

Despite making history, the Huskies didn’t celebrate their achievement long. Once the initial excitement of seeing their name come up on the selection show faded, they turned their attention to the task at hand.

“You're so excited… and it's a feeling of accomplishment,” Cavanaugh said. “Then you switch to, right away, ‘We gotta prepare for a game here. This is going to be a battle.’ So that that feeling of excitement immediately shifts and goes to, ‘We have some work to do here.’”

“It's something I maybe don't recognize as much right now just because, we're trying to get focused and get ready for this thing,” Spetz said. “But I'm aware of how special this is for the school and for our team and all the guys in there and the coaches. But we're excited to attack this thing.”