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(08/27/03 6:48am)
STORRS, Conn. -- The countdown started after the final game of the 2002 season: 265 days.\nNow Connecticut is just four days from kicking off a new era in the 40,000-seat Rentschler Field and the players, to put it mildly, are pumped up.\n"We're actually going to have to try to bring people down on Saturday," senior wide receiver Shaun Feldeisen said Tuesday. "If you get too excited you could lose your head. There's going to be a lot of emotion on the field that day."\nThe $90 million stadium was built after years of politicking with a combination of public and private money.\nIts opening marks a major milestone in fifth-year head coach Randy Edsall's effort to build a competitive I-A program from scratch. The team's 6-6 finish last year was its most successful since the upgrade.\nWhen UConn plays host to Indiana Saturday, it will be the school's first game against a Big 10 opponent.\n"This is a great event for the state of Connecticut," Edsall said Tuesday. "It really legitimizes to me what the Division-IA process is all about."\nOne of Edsall's tasks on Saturday is to keep the players focused on the game and not the inaugural atmosphere. Some 24,000 season tickets have already been sold.\n"I know they'll be pumped up. The think I'll keep reminding them is that we've been to the stadium, we've seen the stadium. When they walk out of that tunnel, yeah, there's going to be a great feeling and a great environment and the reason we're here is to play the game between the white lines and get a win."\nWhen the Huskies open Saturday, they will be riding a four-game win streak that included the season-ending road upset of bowl-bound Iowa State. That memory was enough to sustain the players over the long offseason.\n"The days are kind of long in the winter and you just think about that feeling when we came off the field that Saturday and it kind of gets you pumped back up again," Feldeisen said.\nFueling the big expectations this year is the return of sophomore tailback Terry Caulley, who led all freshmen last year, averaging 124.7 rushing yards and 145.2 all purpose yards a game.\nTo stay focused amid the hoopla, Caulley turns to his closest support system -- his family. He said he talks to his parents in Maryland every night.\n"They don't want me to get stressed out about what's going on," Caulley said. "My mom calms me down, my father, he does too. There's a lot of media covering the new stadium and fans expecting big things from the team, so I just got to get away from that and talk to people back home."\nJunior quarterback Dan Orlovsky, the program's first blue chip recruit from Connecticut said it will be an honor to take the first snap at Rentschler Field on Saturday.\n"Being from the state of Connecticut and knowing that this is really a Connecticut stadium and a Connecticut team, it's really a privilege to play," said Orlovsky, a former Shelton High School standout.\nThe potential of off-the-chart exuberance doesn't faze senior co-captain Sean Mulcahy, a 292-pound defensive tackle.\n"The more excitement, the better you are," Mulcahy said.\nBesides, he said, there's plenty of time to wind down.\n"I'll settle down on Sunday," he said.
(02/04/03 5:50am)
STORRS, Conn. -- Connecticut men's coach Jim Calhoun has prostate cancer and is leaving the team for up to a month for surgery and treatment.\n"I want to attack this thing," Calhoun said Monday at practice. "I want to get it out of my system, and I want to fight this like I've fought everything else in my life. I'll win this battle, and with my family and the love and prayers of everybody, be back on the sidelines soon."\nThe 60-year-old coach will take a three- to four-week medical leave, with assistant George Blaney taking over on an interim basis. Surgery was scheduled for Thursday.\nCalhoun's doctor, UConn Health Center urologist Peter Albertsen, said the cancer was detected early and was "relatively low-grade."\n"Coach Calhoun's condition appears to be very treatable, and we anticipate his return to normal job-related activities within three or four weeks," said Albertsen, who will perform the operation.\nNow in his 17th season at Connecticut, Calhoun has led the Huskies to national prominence, peaking with the 1999 NCAA title. With a career record of 637-290, including 14 seasons at Northeastern, Calhoun is eighth among active Division I coaches.\nThe 18th-ranked Huskies (13-4, 4-2 Big East) play Wednesday night at Virginia Tech. They're coming off a 95-71 loss to Boston College on Saturday, their worst loss ever at Gampel Pavilion.\n"We can handle what we have to handle," Blaney said. "He's one of the strongest guys I ever met. I know that he will fight it -- that's not been a question."\nBefore coming to UConn, he was coach at Seton Hall for three years, until 1997.\nCalhoun learned he had cancer Friday and told the team shortly before meeting with reporters Monday.\n"My mouth just dropped," said guard Taliek Brown. "All my prayers are with him. Everybody will just play his hardest for him."\n"He said he just wanted us to play hard," guard Tony Robertson said. "He said he has enough people praying for him to get better. Basketball is the least thing he should be worrying about right now."\nFormer UConn star Donyell Marshall, who played for Calhoun from 1991-94 and now is with the Chicago Bulls, said his ex-coach has "always been a fighter."\n"I'm just glad he caught it early. It's not going to take years or whatever," he said before Monday night's game in Phoenix.\nCalhoun said he spoke by phone Sunday with Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who was treated for an enlarged prostate last season. Boeheim also lost both his parents to cancer.\n"He was great," Calhoun said.\nCalhoun said his cancer was detected through routine prostate screening, and he praised the benefits of the procedure.\n"Do your family, do your loved ones a favor, and make sure you get yourself screened," he said.\nCalhoun said his family was the most important reason for moving ahead quickly with treatment. He has three grandchildren. "I want to see them grow," he said.
(01/28/03 6:07am)
HARTFORD, Conn. -- After a losing streak in Florida, the WNBA is gambling on Connecticut.\nThe Mohegan Sun casino will acquire a WNBA franchise, the former Orlando Miracle, a gaming industry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Monday.\nThe league and the casino called a news conference for Tuesday in Uncasville. Casino spokesman Saverio Mancini and the WNBA would not comment on specifics.\nNykesha Sales, a former University of Connecticut star and the Miracle's first franchise draft pick, is to attend the announcement along with WNBA commissioner Val Ackerman and Connecticut Lt. Gov. M. Jodi Rell.\nThe team would play in the casino's 10,000-seat arena. The league has said it will allow a casino to own a team as long as there is no sports betting at the facility. There is no sports book at the Mohegan Sun. The NBA has played exhibition games at the arena.\nThe league changed its business model in October, ending central ownership of teams and cutting ties that bound teams to NBA franchises. Orlando and the league's Miami franchise folded and the Utah franchise moved to San Antonio.\nThe league has been interested in placing a team in Connecticut because of the state's strong interest in women's basketball.\nUConn's women's teams have won three national championships in seven years -- the men have won a fourth -- and their games are sellouts at the 10,000-seat Gampel Pavilion on campus and the 16,000-seat Hartford Civic Center.\n"I'm not surprised that eventually the league would end up in some cities where there wasn't necessarily an NBA presence but a women's basketball presence," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "Certainly there's no place in America that has a bigger presence or better appreciation for women's basketball than this place does. It's only natural."\nThe Hartford-based New England Blizzard set attendance records in the now-defunct American Basketball League. That team, launched in 1996, tapped into the interest arising from UConn's 1995 national title and drafted three former Huskies -- Jennifer Rizzotti, Kara Wolters and Carla Berube.\nOf the 10 largest crowds in the league's 2 1/2-year run, seven were logged at the Hartford Civic Center, including a record crowd of 15,418 on Jan. 23, 1997. The league folded just under a year later.