On the recordApril 9, 2014
Madam President, I applaud my colleague Senator Mikulski for her great work, in spite of the result today. Congratulating the UConn Huskies I am here on the floor, however, to congratulate my UConn Huskies for a double national championship. It has only been done once before in the history of college basketball--the men winning a national championship and the women winning a national championship in the same year--and the last time it was us too, in 2004 and now in 2014. So, very briefly, I wish to add my congratulations to those offered by Senator Blumenthal. Our new coach, Kevin Ollie, when he took the job, went on TV and said that despite some of the tough times surrounding the UConn program, his intent was for UConn basketball to take the stairs and not the elevator. He said elevators were for cowards, and they were going to walk one step at a time towards a national championship. Given the fact our long-time Hall of Fame coach had just left, we had sanctions which didn't allow our team to play for a year in the postseason. People thought it just wasn't possible that UConn was ever going to be able to return to the greatness we have seen over the last 20 years. But in Coach Ollie's first tournament, he brought his team to a victory led, of course, by our great point guard Shabazz Napier-- another Connecticut first and second. There are only two players who were national champions in the men's tournament who scored 125 points, had 25 assists and 25 rebounds.…
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