INDIANAPOLIS — Here comes the Final Four’s Yoda. Strong with the force, he is. Especially in March and early April.
Yoda? Yeah, Alex Karaban decides that’ll work, sitting in the Connecticut locker room, surrounded by all these younger UConn Jedi knights, looking to him for wisdom.
“That’s what Braylon asked me yesterday,” he says. “Just give me a rundown on what the Final Four is like. So I gave him the whole rundown.”
Braylon Mullins just hit the NCAA tournament shot of the decade and is the Huskies' hottest face. But he hasn't ever been in a Final Four. Karaban has. This’ll be three.
He's way past being surprised by the media horde, taken aback by the strange perspectives of shooting in a football stadium, or in awe of the moment. When Karaban takes the court Saturday against Illinois, it will be his 150th game with Connecticut. He has won 125 of the first 149.
It will also be his 19th NCAA tournament game. He has lost one of the first 18. He has more March wins in his career than schools such as Clemson, Seton Hall, Minnesota, TCU, Georgia and Mississippi State own in their entire history. He has as many as Southern California.
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“I’m extremely comfortable in this environment so nothing should really faze me,” he is saying. “I’m not really distracted by the outside noises and more focused on the main purpose.”
He remembers leaning on the Huskies vets his first time around as a freshman. “Now I have guys leaning on me. I’ve been through every type of win, every type of loss and seen it all.
“It’s the confidence I kind of have of who I am as a person.”
If you were a UConn player and had a Final Four question, who would you go to?
The Final Four buzz grows around Karaban. He's seen it before. He glances down the way to the thick cluster of microphones around Mullins. “When he stepped on campus he wouldn’t say a word. He wouldn’t talk to me, he’d go hide in his room. You can definitely see how much more comfortable he is out here.”
They've talked. No. 11 is the leader of this pack. You feel it with every word.
“It's like hiring a babysitter for your team,” coach Dan Hurley said. “He just babysits your team for 4.5 years.
“He's the greatest problem solver you'll ever have in practice, in games, and then the tone he sets for your culture with his work habits, the peer pressure that that puts on everyone in the organization when your best player works as hard as he does, it just puts enormous pressure on everyone to stay out of Ted's at night, which is a bar on campus, and to be in the gym shooting.”
Culture. Very big word at UConn. Karaban talks a bit about that.
“It’s been my job to pass that culture down and make sure everybody that comes in the program understands what’s expected...You’ve got to run everywhere, you've got to play as hard as you can. If you don’t live up to the culture you’re kind of an outcast in a way."
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And look where it leads. “At Connecticut,” he says. “we’ve seen magic stuff happen.”
Yeah, Yoda. That’s certainly better than what teammate Tarris Reed Jr called him during his press session. Old Dog. Old Dog.
“That’s an interesting way to put it,” Karaban says. He doesn’t seem quite sure about that moniker. “I don’t want this to end. I want to keep going, I want to keep playing and really keep wearing that Connecticut jersey across my chest. I guess if the old dog wants to keep living for its treats and my treat’s a win, yeah, I’ll keep playing for it.”
UConn was a second-round casualty to Florida's title's run last season, so in early April Karaban turned on the TV to find other people playing in the Final Four. “I’m a big college basketball fan so I watched it. It definitely hurts knowing that I was in the Final Four before and I know what those teams are experiencing right now and every lesson that comes with a Final Four. Yeah it hurts. I think you just use it as fuel.”
Nothing much takes him by surprise. Not even his coach, who popped out a few Hurley-isms for the media this week: “We came here for rings, not watches," Hurley had said. "Everyone that comes to the Final Four gets a beautiful watch, but only one group is going to get a ring. So get off social media, stop injecting the dopamine into your arm and get serious about the preparation and the practice because we don't hang banners for Final Fours at UConn. We hang national championship banners.”
Slight knowing smile from Karaban.
“I think he started that line in practice,” he says. “He’s not stopping. He’s pushing harder now. We’re right here. We’re at the end stretch, why stop now? Just push harder to get the goal and the achievement that is going to sit in UConn history forever. We could be immortal.”
The Final Four? “At the end of the day,” Karaban says, “it’s like a little pit stop for us to our biggest goal, which is winning the national championship.”
Obviously, Karaban and Hurley go way back. This is no longer just a coach and athlete.
“I don’t see him as a basketball coach,” Karaban says. “He’s really a mentor. He’s been like a father figure to me in a way just with all the life advice that he’s given me and being my side through all the ups and downs we’ve been through together.”
By now, Karaban figures, nothing Hurley could do or say would surprise him.
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“I think I’ve seen it all.”
That included last season when Hurley fought his own temper and pressure issues and the team sagged. It was not a great time. Karaban had been around plenty enough blocks to understand what was happening.
“Last year there was a lot of threepeat talk and a lot of external pressure that kind of led into internal pressure. It was really threepeat...threepeat ...threepeat. And what if we don’t get it? Now that we didn’t get it you let those emotions go away. You sit back in the off-season and really think about what we need to do better. I think he just brought more joy back.”
Not many players can sit in a locker room in April and compare Final Four teams. Karaban can. He said this trip, with the spotlight on Michigan and Arizona, reminds him more of 2023, when the Huskies slipped up on people. Everyone knew what was coming in 2024. To not be the favorite makes it easier to carry a chip on the shoulder. Connecticut just loves chips on its shoulders.
One more game, two more, and it's finally over. He already has the Huskies career wins record, a mark he says is most meaningful to him given the UConn brand. Two more victories would give him 19 in the NCAA tournament and push him into second on the all-time list past... Dan Hurley’s brother Bobby.
“If that moment happens I’m definitely going to bring it up to coach and see his reaction.”
Most of all he would have national championship number three. The last players to do that were wearing UCLA blue for John Wooden.
“On Monday night," he says, "“that would be the best one.”
Media time is over and Karaban leaves with some of his teammates, including Reed. Karaban wants to have a word about that old dog thing.
