In the lead-up to Super Bowl LIX, much has been made of the Kansas City Chiefs trying to become the first team in NFL history to ever win three consecutive Super Bowls. Whatever comes of Kansas City’s three-peat bid when the Super Bowl ends, the page on the sports calendar will then turn to another three-peat bid: that of UConn in the NCAA Tournament.
After winning back-to-back NCAA men’s basketball titles in 2023 and 2024, UConn coach Dan Hurley and his Huskies team will be looking for their third consecutive championship this March. And speaking to the Kansas City Star, Hurley offered effusive praise for the Chiefs and how they do things, drawing direct parallels between the AFC champions and his own UConn squad.
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“They’ve got a culture that screams at you. Because of the combination of the head coach, quarterback — it’s never enough for them,” Hurley told The Star. “Whether they win the Super Bowl or not — the most impressive thing to me is them going 15-2 in the regular season after they won two in a row. Really, in the last game, they made them lose (the Chiefs rested their starters having already clinched the No. 1 seed), but I’m sure they all wanted to play.
“That was like us last year. We had everything clinched and we won games at the end of the regular season by significant margins that we didn’t even need to win. Everything becomes automatic. Everything with the Chiefs right now, everything is automatic — the execution, the players understanding their roles, levels of accountability, the culture, the type of player they want and the type of player they bring in.”
Although a three-peat would be unprecedented and make the Chiefs dynasty like no other in the NFL‘s Super Bowl era, UConn has already been beaten to the punch. The only team to pull off a three-peat in NCAA men’s basketball was UCLA, which won a record seven consecutive titles in the 1970s.
Compared to the Chiefs rolling over virtually all challengers, however, the Huskies’ path to a three-peat looks considerably more difficult. UConn is currently 15-6 and has gone 4-3 in their last seven games, as they have been blunted by the loss of a number of their stars to the NBA.
