UConn’s Alex Karaban is a throwback to an earlier time. He’s aiming to do something no college player has done since the ’70s

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

Indianapolis (CNN) — Asked if he recalled that he once suggested a young Alex Karaban might “turn his socks yellow” upon entering his first college basketball game, Dan Hurley did not pause.

“Did I say he’d poop his pants, too?” Hurley said.

This as he zipped through the hallways of Capital One Arena in Washington DC, not two minutes removed from sitting on a dais for a press conference where he proclaimed of Karaban that his was “a responsibility of greatness.”

Back when players traditionally stayed at the same school for four years, Karaban’s evolution would have been ordinary, just another player who had matured as a person and grown as an athlete over the course of his time at UConn.

Now, he is an anomaly. Aside from former walk-on AJ Redd at Illinois, Karaban is the only senior at the Final Four who has spent every single game in the same uniform. Karaban’s sticking power is a fascinating dynamic when juxtaposed with the changing climate in college basketball.

Somewhere over the course of time and the quest to make the NBA, staying in college too long has become a sign of failure, as if either being a great college player or not being NBA-ready soon enough is a sign of a deficiency. NIL is helping a little bit, the money enticing some players to not hightail it to the pros too quickly. But the general idea is to treat college as a stop-over and move along as fast as possible, ready or not.

Karaban, one NBA scout says, is a likely second-rounder who, maybe if he had left after the Huskies’ first title, might have played his way into the first round.

“But the more we see of you, the more warts we find,” the scout told CNN Sports. “But he’s going to be a first-to-practice, last-to-leave guy, great in the locker room and he’ll know all of your plays. He’s got a funky shot, but it goes in. He’s 6’8”. He’s strong, so you ask, ‘Can he be a Kyle Korver?’ I don’t know, but I do know he’s a great college player and what’s wrong with that? How many people get to say that about themselves?”

Indeed. To consider Karaban as anything but an abject success story is absurd. Should the Huskies secure another national title, he will be the first player since those who suited up for John Wooden in the 1970s to win three national titles. Since the NCAA Tournament began in 1939, only two players – Duke’s Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley (Karaban’s coach’s brother) – have won more NCAA Tournament games than the Huskies forward’s 17.

At UConn, he is already the first active player to enter the school’s Huskies of Honor, a ring that already includes Kemba Walker, Rip Hamilton and Emeka Okafor. In the course of his career, Karaban has won 125 games, lost 27 and started 148. When he graduates, he will be the winningest player in UConn history, a ridiculous statement for a school that has won six national titles.

And he has done it the hardest way of all: neither as an overnight sensation nor a phenom, but as a player who has mastered the fine and lost art of consistency.

A nerd becomes a UConn legend

To be clear, Karaban’s socks did not, in fact, turn yellow. He dropped 13 points in his UConn debut, and there was never any real reason to believe they would. Karaban was no rube; he was a consensus top-50 recruit and, alongside Donovan Clingan and Corey Floyd Jr., part of a top-10 class for Hurley in 2021.

But he isn’t now nor was he ever the kind of player who would turn your head upon entering a building.

“You look at the first media pictures,” Hurley said. “He looks like Ichabod Crane (of) the Headless Horseman (fame).”

Kinda mean? Yes. Inaccurate? Check out the Adam’s apple and decide.

A self-admitted nerd, Karaban frankly came by his love for math more naturally than his devotion to hoops. His mother, Olga, is a Ukrainian immigrant who has a doctorate from Northeastern and his father, Alexi, who is from Belarus, works as a software engineer.

Upon finishing their official visit to UConn, Olga made her son return for a second, worried that the family hadn’t received enough information about the school’s economics.

Karaban initially pursued a combo platter of three majors – computer science, sports management and statistics – before boiling it down to an economics degree. He graduated in May with a 3.39 and is now pursuing a certificate in non-profit management.

On the surface, at least, all of that would seem to make Karaban entirely ill-suited for Hurley – the orderly, math nerd introvert versus the whirling dervish extrovert. Except Karaban also was the kid who went outside during the cold Massachusetts winters to practice his shot. He’s also the quiet-fire-in-the-belly burner who once trashed not one, not two, but three TVs after some bad gaming led to a fateful intersection of remote and screen.

He burns, just a little more quietly.

“Yeah, I think I’m secretly more like coach than people realize,” Karaban admits. “I’m not as fiery as him, but the way we both take a loss, for example. We both make it seem like the world is ending. And it’s just the priorities in life. We both try to keep the main thing the main thing.”

What helped in both the player-coach relationship and Karaban’s comfort in finding his voice is that he didn’t have to take center stage upon arrival in Storrs.

Though a starter from the jump, Karaban was neither the primary offensive focus nor the man in charge for two seasons. As a freshman, as the Huskies roared to their first title under Hurley, Adama Sanogo and Tristan Newton carried the load. When they ran it back to another championship, it was Newton and Cam Spencer serving as the head of the dog.

It allowed him room to breathe. The mantle finally came to rest upon his shoulders last year as the lone returner from those title winners, but it didn’t go as planned. Or, at least, not like Hurley thought it would.

The disappointment of junior year sets up a Final Four run

Ahead of Karaban’s junior year, Hurley spoke openly and often about a three-peat and invoked the word dynasty, going so far as to make bracelets for his players with the word inscribed on them.

Only after, when it was too late, did Hurley stop and think about what he was doing. Rather than absorbing pressure, he was dishing it out, creating later what he called a miserable season (though to be fair, UConn’s definition of miserable, 24-11 and a second-round loss, would be fine at plenty of places).

Karaban, whose numbers have always hovered in the same range, saw the biggest dip of his career. He shot just 34% from the arc and 43% from the floor. Having eschewed an early entry to the NBA draft twice already – one scout intimated that Karaban might have turned down a guaranteed first-round pick after his first year – the forward willingly signed up for his final run in Storrs.

He worked absurdly hard, crafting the shot that lost a little on its fastball last season. He set a standard that his fellow Huskies understood, even if Karaban never felt the need to scream it at them.

That is still his way. Hurley has pushed Karaban to get out of his comfort zone and find his voice as a more vocal leader. He is certainly more animated – he’s let out more than a few primal screams during this NCAA Tournament – but he remains more of a leader by example than by vocal command.

Which, frankly, works as a counter-balance to Hurley, who is all bark, and just as much bite.

To watch them at times, in fact, is to watch a kid parenting a parent. Something of a Hurley whisperer, who is there to translate what the coach wants – minus the additional adjectives – for his teammates, usually sitting and smirking while Hurley riffs on the grievance of the day.

“He’s a calming influence for me,” Hurley said – adding glibly, “I’m waiting for you to laugh.”

UConn’s Elite Eight comeback was more methodical than madness, like watching a sculptor slowly chipping away to expose his subject. But as is the case with art, the beauty of the Huskies’ finish made everyone forget how grueling the creation actually was. Lost in the avalanche of confetti brought down by Braylon Mullins’ game-winning logo three were a series of big moments that added up to another Final Four for UConn.

The Huskies don’t win the game without any of them, including one that exemplified the school’s ultimate winner.

Karaban spent the better part of the night assaulting the Capital One Arena rims, missing all five of his first threes, and eight of his first nine shots. Yet with 50 seconds left in the game and nothing less than the rest of his career on the line, there he was: popping off a screen at the top of the arc.

His socks did not turn yellow. Karaban swished his first and only 3-pointer of the night.

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