Five NCAA titles later, Donyell Marshall’s vision of UConn has proven to be 20-20

By Mike Drago Last updated Apr 12, 2023

Donyell Marshall, with ESPN's Dick Vitale, left, and Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun. (Photo courtesy of UConn Athletics).

Donyell Marshall became an overnight sensation in the summer of 1990, just before his senior year at Reading High.

No one outside of Pennsylvania knew much about him until he attended the NIKE All-American ABCD Camp at Princeton where he went against the greatest players in the nation – Chris Webber, Glen Robinson, Jalen Rose, Ben Davis, Juwan Howard, Alan Henderson, Cherokee Parks – most of them already committed to powerhouse programs such as Michigan, Purdue, Kansas, Indiana and Duke.

Marshall, 6-8 and just coming into his own, showed he could play with the best of them.

Once home he was flooded with recruiting letters from all the major programs. He spent hours sorting through them. He picked up one from Jim Calhoun and was ready to toss it aside. His uncle Chuckie cautioned him not to.

“I like what they’re doing there,” the late Charles “Big Chuckie” Marshall told him.

Donyell didn’t see it.

“They had a good run (in the NCAA Tournament that year),” Marshall recalled, “but (I thought): Who’s Connecticut?’ You knew they were in the Big East Conference but you didn’t really know who Connecticut was.”

A year later he began to see the vision Calhoun had, that U-Conn could rise from the cellar of the budding Big East Conference to become a national power.

Marshall, on the way home from playing in the McDonald’s All-American game at Springfield, Mass., following his senior season stopped in Storrs, Conn., to see Calhoun.

Marshall had been leaning toward Maryland, in the powerhouse Atlantic Coast Conference. Then Calhoun laid it all out for him: Marshall could be the one to help turn Connecticut into a national power.

The Huskies hadn’t sniffed a national championship before Calhoun arrived a few years earlier; no one in their right mind envisioned them cutting down the nets at the conclusion of March Madness.

They were never mentioned in the same sentence with North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas or Duke, the blue bloods of men’s college basketball. Calhoun saw them joining that elite group and he convinced the skinny kid from Reading that he could help make it happen.

“That was the vision,” Marshall said.

“You could be the first big name to go there,” Uncle Chuckie told him. “You could help turn that program around. You could be the first everything.”

That resonated with Marshall.

Donyell Marshall with the University of Connecticut. (Photo courtesy of UConn Athletics).

Thirty years later the landscape of college basketball is different. Sure, Kentucky, Kansas, Duke and North Carolina are still major players but none have done what U-Conn has: Five national championship in the last quarter century.

None has even won four. No one has – except the Huskies.

They’ve done it with three different head coaches and five different groups of players, their five championships spaced out by at least three years: 1999, 2004, 2011, 2014 and 2023.

Calhoun won the first three. Kevin Ollie, who played with Marshall in college, won the next. Danny Hurley, a teammate of Marshall’s at the 1991 Olympic Festival, won one last week.

Only UCLA (11), Kentucky (8) and Carolina (6) have more titles than Connecticut, and they all had big head starts.

Marshall helped put U-Conn basketball on the map. He was the first national recruit for the program. Though his teams never made it past a regional final the fact that he went there and excelled opened the door for other great national recruits: Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton, Kemba Walker, Emeka Okafor, Khalid El-Amin.

“You needed somebody to go there to say: ‘This is the school that can get you there,’ ” Marshall said. “For me, that was the vision . . . to go there to bring attention to that school.”

Marshall doubted himself when he arrived in Storrs; he didn’t think he measured up to the competition. Calhoun assured him he did, and again he was right.

Marshall went on to become the program’s first consensus All-America pick, the Big East Player of the Year and a finalist for national Player of the Year after an incredible junior season that saw him average 25.1 points and lead the Huskies to 29 wins and within a couple free throws of the Final Four. He was named to U-Conn’s all-century team after scoring 1,648 points in three seasons. He remains among the greatest to play there.

“Being the first All-American, the first Player of the Year, the first player to leave school early (for the NBA) . . . there was something about being the first,” said Marshall.

Marshall turns 50 in May. He’ll be a grandfather in June. He has remained connected with the program over the years and has taken great pride in seeing it become one of the nation’s most successful.

Calhoun thought so highly of him, and the impact he made, that he gifted him with a ring following the first national championship.

“I was hoping that I would’ve been the first to bring that (championship) there,” Marshall said. “Unfortunately, things happened my junior year. I might not have won the championship; I might not have gone to the Final Four but I think the vision that Coach Calhoun had started with (me).”