Yale Daily News

When the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball team reached the Final Four last March, Governor Ned Lamont SOM ’80 proclaimed a “Husky Weekend.” He attended the Huskies’ games in Houston. When they won March Madness, Lamont spoke at a championship parade in Hartford.

“Some people are Red Sox fans; some are Yankees fans. Everybody is a UConn fan today,” Lamont told the crowd, standing in front of the victorious players. “That’s what it means to this state. Everybody is a fan.”

That was last year, with only one Connecticut team in the NCAA Division I national men’s basketball tournament. This year, after Yale’s nail-biting win in the Ivy League championship on Sunday, two men’s teams from Connecticut will compete in March Madness — leaving politicians in the state, and in New Haven, with divergent or uncertain loyalties.

The Huskies, seeded No. 1 across the 64-team tournament, and the Bulldogs, No. 52, would face each other in Boston in the Sweet 16 round if both teams win their first two games, meaning that at most one Connecticut men’s team could reach the Elite Eight. Unless the intrastate showdown comes, questions of allegiance remain largely academic.

But if statewide elected officials are taking sides, the dilemma may fall hardest on Lamont, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz ’83 and Senator Richard Blumenthal LAW ’73. It’s a choice between Connecticut’s flagship public university and their alma mater, whether from the School of Management, college or law school.

“It’s like choosing between children here,” Bysiewicz said in an interview, noting that she spent her first year of law school at the University of Connecticut. “I’m wishing Yale the best. Let’s be honest, UConn’s the top seed. So we’ll see how it goes.”

Lamont declined to pick one team but told the News he would attend the Yale-UConn matchup if it happens. He said he would wear blue, a color the two schools share. In a statement to the News, Blumenthal also expressed equal enthusiasm for both teams.

Political incentives, to say nothing of basketball prowess, would seem to favor the Huskies.

Lamont could use goodwill during an ongoing budget fight with UConn administrators, and the university’s main campus in Storrs educates about 19,000 undergraduates, nearly 70 percent of them Connecticut residents. Even with recent increases in its local investment, Yale faces continual pressure to give more money to New Haven and hire more New Haveners. Only approximately 400 Yale College students hail from Connecticut.

Asked for their views on the two Connecticut men’s teams entering March Madness, even prominent New Haven politicians refrained from siding with just the hometown team.

Mayor Justin Elicker SOM ’10 YSE ’10 wrote that the Bulldogs “will have the City of New Haven rooting for their success in the Big Dance” — before concluding his statement, “Go Bulldogs and Go Huskies!”

When pressed for which team he would support in a hypothetical Yale-UConn game, Elicker, through his spokesman, declined to comment.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who was born in New Haven and has represented the city in Congress for 33 years, similarly wished “both teams the best of luck” in a statement to the News.

There was no such parity in comments from DeLauro’s colleague Rep. Joe Courtney, a UConn law school graduate whose district includes Storrs.

Courtney wrote that he is “a lifelong die hard Husky fan” who would be “watching every minute, and rooting for a repeat” of UConn’s championship. But he added, “Yale’s buzzer beater win at the Ivy League tournament was impressive. They are a dangerous underdog.”

The Bulldogs, though underdogs they may be in their first-round game against Auburn on Friday, do have some unequivocal fans in New Haven politics.

Ward 29 Alder Brian Wingate, the vice president of Yale’s service and maintenance staff union, Local 35, told the News he hoped to cheer on the Bulldogs at Delaney’s Restaurant & Tap Room in Westville. Still, in his March Madness bracket, Wingate predicts that UConn will beat Yale in the Sweet 16.

College basketball has carried a special weight in Connecticut in recent years, as the Huskies’ success has galvanized many in a state with no major league men’s professional sports teams. Three teams from the state are set to compete in the women’s national tournament, in addition to the two men’s teams.

“We are the basketball capital of America when it comes to college basketball,” Lamont said in an interview. “It’d be exciting as hell if Yale was a bigger part of that.”

Yale and UConn have not competed in men’s basketball since 2014, when the Bulldogs upset the Huskies by one point, ending UConn’s 13-game winning streak in the series.

Correction, March 22: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz.