Kevin Ollie made his mark during the University of Connecticut's rise to one of college basketball's premier programs. The now Brooklyn Nets interim head coach won a national championship as the Huskies' head coach in 2014.

While Ollie's UConn tenure ended on a sour note, with an NCAA violations investigation leading to his firing in 2018, he was happy to see his former team repeat as national champions on Monday. And with the Huskies now third all-time with six national titles, Ollie said they've cemented their place in the blue blood conversation.

“They have to make us a blue blood now,” he said before Brooklyn's 106-102 win over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday. “They keep trying to keep us out… But we've been running this thing for 30 years, and everybody knows it.”

UConn dominates title conversation

Connecticut Huskies head coach Kevin Ollie waves to fans after cutting down the net following the championship game of the Final Four in the 2014 NCAA Mens Division I Championship tournament against the Kentucky Wildcats at AT&T Stadium
Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

UConn's back-to-back titles moved them ahead of Duke and Indiana while tying North Carolina in the race for most NCAA championships. Only UCLA (11) and Kentucky (8) have won more. However, the Huskies rank first in the last 20 years with five championships. North Carolina trails them with three over that timeframe, while Duke, Kansas, Villanova and Florida each have two.

This year's UConn team took the throne as the most dominant in NCAA tournament history. Dan Hurley's squad won all six games by double-digits, finishing with a plus-140 point differential, the highest of all time.

“That's a hell of a team, this year and last year, to win all those games by double figures and just run through the tournament,” Ollie said. “Coach Hurley has done a marvelous job there. The players and coaching staff are just wonderful.”

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The Huskies were headlined by a dominant big man in Donovan Clingan, a stark contrast to Kevin Ollie's guard-centric title team. Clingan averaged 15.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.2 blocks on 64.5 percent shooting during this year's tournament run.

Shabazz Napier and Ryan Boatright led the way for Ollie in 2014, both earning a spot on the Final Four All-Tournament team. Napier averaged 21.2 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 2.5 steals on 46/47/94 shooting splits during the tournament. He was named the Final Four's most outstanding player.

While Ollie admitted the challenges this year's UConn squad would present in a theoretical matchup, he said his backcourt duo would make things interesting.

“Man, that group on Monday was pretty good. We didn't have the bigs like they had. We had two little guards that were ferocious, so that would've been a tough challenge for us,” he said. “But [Ryan] Boatright and Shabazz [Napier] playing up on their guards, it would wreak some problems.”