David Borges

Excellent review of Ucon's downfall and subsequent 2014 championship season. I enjoyed learning about Kevin Ollie and his coaching style, more about life than basketball. However, I did skim through some of the basketball game minutae.

Borges provides a thorough look at UConn’s 2014 championship. It always helps to have a view from a writer that is part of the fray throughout season, even if he did inadvertently get the writers kicked out of practice. The only thing I wonder about is the subtitle, “from Defeat to Dominance,” since the defeat was something of their own making. But all in all this is a good read for fans of college basketball.

This is a book for UConn basketball fans, through and through. I happen to be one of those people, and so I bring that perspective to the book. It is a straightforward retelling of the season which reads in beat writer fashion (indeed, the author was a beat writer for the team during the season). If you are not interested in UConn, it is hard to imagine you'd care much about game by game details, or the relatively straightforward sports-interview-talk of the athletes themselves. The book is show more also full of minor annoyances - it feels at times to be cobbled together from columns from the season with information repeated in usual ways. For example, on one page, we are told about UConn's record against a program over its history, before shortly being told its record against that team in conference play. The records are close to identical, and they are not explicitly contrasted with each other. Or, we are told about Kentucky's run to meet UConn in the title game in one chapter, only to be retold the same story at the beginning of the next. The book is not particularly well written, and the editing is often poor.

That said - a book like this has a primary function, and that is to entertain fans of the team by allowing us to relive the championship season. As a fan, I really enjoyed reading the book. If you are not interested in UConn basketball, there is not a lot here to catch your interest. If you are a fan, then the chance to relive the season is well worth the minor annoyances. show less

If you aren't a sports fan, you'll probably feel - as I did - that there's TOO much detail in this recounting of the 2014 championship season of the University of Connecticut (UConn) men's basketball team, and what led up to it. I wasn't expecting quite so much minutiae.

Author David Borges is a sportwriter, and to his credit, he provides eight-and-a-half pages of footnotes at the end identifying sources for many of the quotes in his book. There are also twelve pages of black-and-white show more photos about 2/3 of the way through the book.

I'm sure this book would be more appreciated by a UConn alumnus or sports supporter, or a college basketball fan. show less