HOUSTON, TX – APRIL 04: Head coach Jim Calhoun of the Connecticut Huskies cuts down the net after defeating the Butler Bulldogs to win the National Championship Game of the 2011 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament by a score of 53-41 at Reliant Stadium on April 4, 2011 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
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Before asking UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley a question in a press conference last Sunday night, Sam Calhoun provided his name and media affiliation, just as the moderator had requested. Calhoun said he worked for the Daily Campus, UConn’s student newspaper.
“I know you,” Hurley said. “I know your grandfather. Great. The GOAT.”
Calhoun, the grandson of legendary former UConn coach Jim Calhoun, asked Hurley about the 35-footer that freshman guard Braylon Mullins made with less than a second remaining in the NCAA tournament East Region final. The shot gave the Huskies a stunning 73-72 victory over Duke, sent them to their third Final Four in four seasons and provided Calhoun and other longtime UConn followers another highlight to remember.
On Saturday night, Calhoun, a UConn senior, will attend his seventh Final Four. But unlike the previous times when he was in the stands with his family and friends, Calhoun will be sitting on press row, covering UConn’s game against Illinois in Indianapolis.
“This year has been everything you could ask for and more,” he said.
Shortly after finishing his article on Sunday’s game, which appeared online and on the front page of the Daily Campus, Calhoun called his grandfather. The first thing Jim Calhoun said was that the ending reminded him of the 1990 Sweet 16 when UConn guard Tate George made a buzzer-beater to defeat Clemson, continuing the Huskies’ dream season.
Back then, Jim Calhoun was in his fourth season at UConn, having taken over a program that had never finished above fourth place in the Big East Conference. The Huskies made just three NCAA tournament appearances in the 20 years before Calhoun arrived, winning just one game in the event. And they entered the 1989-90 season unranked in the preseason Associated Press poll. But that season, UConn ended up winning its first Big East tournament, securing the first No. 1 NCAA tournament seed in school history, advancing to the Elite Eight and winning 31 games, eight more victories than the previous program-high. It was the start of something special.
From 1990 through his retirement in 2012, Calhoun turned a sleepy, overlooked team in a remote New England town into a national power. He led the Huskies to three national titles, and he and women’s coach Geno Auriemma made UConn synonymous with college basketball success.
Sam Calhoun Follows Passion For Basketball And Writing
Sam Calhoun has been along for the ride since birth. At 10 months old, he attended the 2004 Final Four in San Antonio and saw UConn win its second NCAA championship. Calhoun was also in Detroit in 2009 when UConn lost to Michigan State in the Final Four and in Houston in 2011 when the Huskies won the national title. By then, he was a diehard UConn fan and obsessed with basketball.
“I definitely had the determination,” Calhoun said. “I wanted to be the best. I was one of those kids that count down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in their driveway. I did all those things.”
Still, when Calhoun was in middle school in Wellesley, Mass., he realized he wasn’t going to be a star player even at the high school level. But he was an avid reader and close follower of UConn and the Boston professional sports teams. He would keep up with sports statistics and talk about calling the Super Bowl or the Final Four one day.
“He just always just sort of had a knack for it,” said Jim Calhoun Jr., Sam’s father and a longtime sports business executive who was CEO of Converse from 2011 through 2016. “He would love to broadcast games we were watching. He was just deep in that space.”
In January 2021, during Sam’s junior year at Wellesley High School, he started a blog, Calhoun’s Corner, where he wrote about multiple sports. With the COVID-19 pandemic going on, he had plenty of free time.
“I got hooked instantly,” Calhoun said. “It was a lot of fun just getting my thoughts out instead of yapping to my parents.”
By his senior year, Calhoun knew he wanted to study journalism in college. He applied to several schools with top journalism programs such as Missouri, Arizona State and Georgia before selecting UConn, which has a robust sports media program. He pursued his career ambitions soon after enrolling. As a freshman, he covered the women’s hockey and softball teams for the Daily Campus. The next year, he wrote about UConn’s women’s soccer, women’s hockey and softball and chipped in with columns on Big East basketball.
Calhoun also spent time serving as a play-by-play announcer for a few UConn football and women’s basketball games for the student radio station and reported sports news for UCTV, the student television station.
Sam Calhoun Seeks His Grandfather’s Advice
Before his junior year, the Daily Campus editors asked Calhoun to cover the men’s basketball team, a premier assignment. He wasn’t certain about the role, which would take up a lot of time and limit his radio and TV work, so he called his grandfather.
“He kind of gave it to me straight,” Calhoun said. “He was like, ‘You’d be an idiot if you didn’t take that job.’ He was great about all of it. It was like getting his approval on it.”
Calhoun, in fact, often seeks his grandfather’s advice. The two speak at least once a day. Sam calls Jim one of his best friends.
“He’s always been there for me,” Calhoun said. “He’s always pushing me to be good. He’s not yelling at me like he would yell at his players, but he definitely gets after me a little bit, which I do appreciate.”
Said Calhoun Jr.: “They are very, very, very close. It’s been awesome to watch…Sam after a game will call my Dad before he calls me, which is great. I take no offense and love watching it.”
Calhoun Jr., who along with his wife graduated from UConn, said that veteran UConn media members sometimes joke with him that they can’t believe Jim Calhoun’s only grandson is a sports reporter. When Calhoun was coaching for much of the 1990s and 2000s, there were so many reporters from Connecticut newspapers covering the Huskies on a regular basis that the group was referred to as “The Horde,” so Calhoun become accustomed to the constant attention. Still, he wasn’t afraid to share his opinions or criticize questions that reporters asked.
For instance, when asked in 2009 about his high salary when the state had a major budget deficit, Calhoun said “not a dime back,” indicating he wasn’t going to return any money. He later said “my best advice to you is shut up” when the reporter pressed him. And in January 2004, Calhoun said “that’s the dumbest (expletive) question I’ve ever heard” when a veteran columnist asked him about Providence College star forward Ryan Gomes, a Connecticut native who UConn didn’t recruit.
“My Dad, I think, really got the whole media thing,” Calhoun Jr. said. “But of course, as coaches and media tend to do, there were some contentious moments and some infamous moments captured on YouTube. We get a chuckle that Sam ended up on the media side of it. My Dad really loves it.”
The Calhouns Are Looking Forward To Another Final Four
On Thursday, Sam Calhoun flew to Indianapolis with Matt Dimech, a junior at UConn who also covers the men’s basketball program for the Daily Campus. Calhoun and Dimech have had a busy month, traveling to attend UConn’s games in the Big East tournament in New York and the NCAA tournament in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Their colleagues at the campus radio and television stations have been with them, as well.
During the Elite Eight last Sunday, UConn fell behind Duke by 19 points late in the first half. Knowing he had to finish an article that night, Calhoun considered writing about the potential end to the season before changing his mind.
“For some reason, I was just like, ‘It’s March. There’s crazy things that happen. Let me just not do that. Let me just kind of take it in for a little bit and then write all of it down,’” Calhoun said.
As the second half wore on, UConn got closer, but it didn’t take the lead until Mullins made the last second 3-pointer. By the time the press conferences ended and the locker room closed, it was about 9 pm, an hour before Calhoun’s deadline.
“Honestly, it was definitely hard at some points to write about because in that moment, your adrenaline, it’s through the roof, because you have this connection with the school, and you definitely black out for a little bit in terms of just what you remember,’” he said.
After going through his notes and interviews and watching replays of the final sequence, Calhoun filed his article.
“I use the word euphoric when I talk about writing that story,” he said. “That’s a story that I honestly wouldn’t mind getting a frame for that. I would hang that up.”
Calhoun will have one more game to cover on Saturday and possibly another on Monday if UConn advances to the national title game. After graduating in May, he’s hoping to remain connected to college basketball as a writer or in a communications role. But this weekend, he plans on enjoying his final days as a student journalist and being around friends and family.
Jim Calhoun, who turns 84 next month, hasn’t decided if he will be in Indianapolis, but a few members of the family will be there, including Jim Jr. and his wife, Jennifer, a 1991 UConn graduate who was a men’s basketball student manager under her future father-in-law. Forty years after Jim Calhoun arrived at UConn, the connection with the school remains strong, with Sam chronicling another Final Four run that once seemed impossible before his grandfather took over.
“This is very much for us going and enjoying hopefully a couple of victories,” Calhoun Jr. said. “But as much as anything, this is really about going and being with Sam. Sam’s sort of living out the early stages of his dream. It’s very much not lost on us that he’s a part of something incredibly special.”
This article was originally published on Forbes.com