By JEFF OTTERBEIN
Hartford Courant

Both the UConn men's and women's basketball teams were preseason No. 1 in most polls. But it is a long way from there to a national championship.

By the time the NCAA Tournament started, the men looked to be rounding into form. They had won the Big East tournament title with a late comeback against Pitt. And you knew the women, maybe not as invincible as usual, were as good as any team out there. These teams could reach the Final Four. And once they got there ... we could have dual titles.

When they did reach the Final Four, we were ready. For six straight days, Friday, April 2-Wednesday, April 7, we had a regular sports section and an NCAA Tournament section. Most days we were putting out about 100 columns, topping off at 135 in that Sunday section. We had a designer from Graphics do the NCAA cover but we did the rest in sports.

We have covered our share of national championship seasons here — the UConn women in 1995, 2000, 2002 and 2003 and the UConn men in 1999. March is always madness for us, but this was different. Both teams going for national titles, something no school had ever achieved. What they were after was special, so we owed it to our readers to be special, too. Thus, the separate sections each day. Though we cover the Red Sox and Yankees (thus the classic ALCS last year) and Giants and Patriots (a Super Bowl winner this year), clearly UConn men's and women's basketball are our top beats.

We had three writers (Matt Eagan, Desmond Conner, Ken Davis) at the men's Final Four and three writers (Jeff Goldberg, Lori Riley, John Altavilla) at the women's Final Four with columnist Jeff Jacobs bouncing back and forth, an amazing achievement in itself. Thankfully, New Orleans and San Antonio are not light years apart, but even if they were, Jacobs would have made the trip.

There was no stopping him. And he wrote great columns off the men's semifinal game Saturday, the women's semifinal Sunday, the men's championship game Monday and the women's title game Tuesday. And lived to tell about it. We also had two photographers at each event.

The copy desk went flat out, too, because in the middle of this we also were putting out our baseball special section in addition to the two daily sports sections. As usual, our editors wrote some great headlines and continued to improve the section each edition, working tirelessly past 2 a.m. for our final edition to make sure the NCAA section and the regular sports section were as polished as they could be.

The Hartford Courant had only three days to produce a 117-page magazine to commemorate UConn's rare sweep.

Everyone rose to the occasion, from the writers to the editors, going all out because they, too, knew this probably was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We certainly can't expect to see this again. Heck, how many sports editors, even at bigger papers, go years without dealing with a championship team in any sport? And here we are dealing with dual champions. We are indeed lucky to be where we are.

We used our Web site to break the story (Davis) that UConn men's coach Jim Calhoun would not be getting into the Hall of Fame (bet the voters wish they had that one back).

And when it was over, we had three days to put out a 117-page full glossy magazine with a leadoff column by Jacobs, a women's story by beat writer Goldberg, a men's story by beat writer Eagan and the copy editing done by one of our great wordsmiths, Jay Spiegel. It all read brilliantly despite a lack of sleep by many. And then, of course, we had to get Sunday pieces from Goldberg and Eagan and they had to participate in the coverage of a parade in Hartford. Last I knew they had tossed their cellphones into the Connecticut River.