UConn Basketball: Ranking all 6 of Huskies' total national championships

3. 1998-1999, The First Drop of Blue Blood

UConn Basketball had a long road to get to the point of where they are now, which is blue blood status. But the 1999 team is where it truly all began. This program was a few years into their title as "capital of the basketball world," and this is where they began to live up to it.

As we see quite often, all it takes sometimes is one player that puts a team over the hump and brings them to new heights. That player is Richard "Rip" Hamilton, who ended up having a very successful NBA career, but it all started at UConn. He led the Huskies to a dominant season, and they earned a Big East Championship and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

The Huskies handled their business through the Sweet Sixteen, and then had tough competition through the rest of the way. They handled Gonzaga in the Elite Eight, Ohio State in the Final Four, and then they had a date with the Duke Blue Devils at Tropicana Field.

It was poetic that their National Championship matchup would be against Duke, the example of what a blue blood is meant to be. These two squads faced off in a classic game that finished 77-74, which Hamilton contributed 27 points in.

This was the first National Championship in program history and laid the foundation for Storrs to truly become the capital of college basketball.