Seth Davis is in town (of course) as one of CBS's analysts for the Final Four. He was born at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and his first job after graduating from Duke was as a sports writer for the New Haven Register. He worked there for 2 1/2 years before moving on.

I did this story on Davis four years ago, so I'm not going to rehash it all here. But I caught up with him for a few words on Friday (incidentally, for fans who made the trip down to Dallas, he'll be serving Subway's new flatizzas with Jared the Subway Guy on Saturday from 10:45-11:30 a.m. at a Subway restaurant on 1222 Commerce Street in Dallas).

Davis remembers his 2 1/2 years at the Register fondly, living in a high-rise apartment that was right down the street from Yale-New Haven Hospital and walking distance from Toad's Place.

"Walking distance is a generous term," said Davis, who caught acts like the Radiators, Squeeze and Southside Johnny at the well-known venue.

He didn't cover much UConn at the time (Dave Solomon was on the beat), but made lifelong bonds. One of them was with Vito Montelli, the longtime St. Joseph's basketball coach. He recalls being at a St. Joe's year-end banquet one year with John Calipari, who was and remains good friends with Montelli. When Davis saw Calipari the other day, he asked about Montelli.

"I told him I’ve got tickets for him," Calipari replied. "I want him down here, but he can’t make it."

"Calipari really loves him," Davis noted.

Davis and his family lived in Ridgefield for several years, but last July moved out to Los Angeles, where Davis had been researching for three full summers for his recently published book on John Wooden.

As for the Huskies' chances this weekend, Davis said:

“I certainly wouldn’t have expected them to be here. I’m a big believe in luck. This is not to diminish them or anybody else who’s here, but everybody outside of Florida … I mean, UConn needed overtime to beat St. Joe’s. You appreciate that, how hard it is to get here, how easy it is to lose once you get here. But, when you have good guards, that can erase a lot of deficiencies. That’s why, to me, Kevin Ollie is the perfect coach for this team. He’s got two scoring point guards, and getting them to play together is not easy to do. He’s a really impressive guy. I love his attitude, his demeanor. He’s very eloquent. I really like Kevin.”

I only caught the last five years of Jim Calhoun’s career, though that was bountiful enough: from two Final Fours and a national championship to the NIT and first-round exits; from Kemba, A.J. and Hasheem, to Nate Miles, Ken Krayeske and Josh Nochimson. A little bit of everything. Like my time covering the Red Sox beforehand, there was (is) never a dull moment covering UConn.

I think I got a somewhat watered down version of Calhoun. No doubt, he could still be as cantankerous as anyone. He still yelled at press conferences from time to time (see: Krayeske), but not with the same fervor as he did at late Register columnist Dave Solomon. He didn’t seem as overly interested and, at times, agitated about what we wrote about him – at least with the local press. He was actually calm at about 95 percent of the practices I attended (the Sunday morning, post-Rutgers practice this past January being a notable exception).

He was really pretty accessible – often taking my calls to his cell phone or returning them in timely fashion. If I stopped by Gampel on a July day and stopped by his office, he usually had time to talk for a few minutes.

My lasting impression of Calhoun will be that he was the worst loser I’ve ever seen in sports. I don’t really mean that negatively. Other than Tiger Woods (whom I’ve never really covered), I’ve never seen someone so irritated and upset – sometimes even immature – after a loss. His sidelines behavior could be embarrassing, and it essentially stemmed from the fact that his team wasn’t winning, or playing hard, or playing well – and, by extension, embarrassing him in front of some 15,000 people.

One of his most embarrassing episodes came during a Dec. 6, 2007 game at Gampel against Northeastern. On the heels of a postseason-less prior year, the Huskies weren’t playing well and were in danger of losing to the Huskies (Calhoun’s alma mater!) and he was pulling tantrums all night until finally being ejected by Wally Rutecki. After the game, he called Rutecki “incompetent.” Not one of his prouder moments.

Calhoun’s insatiable hatred of losing is a huge part of what made him so great. I’m not a big fan of the cliché “he willed his team to win,” but Calhoun really did do that. He willed his team to win.

I think that’s part of the reason why Calhoun doesn’t boast the same type of coaching tree that guys like Dean Smith, Coach K and others have. Sure, he’s had assistants go on to other jobs, but nobody like a Roy Williams (Smith), a Mike Brey (K), etc. I think part of that is because his success isn’t built so much on coaching philosophy and X’s and O’s. Rather, it’s been built on a competitiveness and appetite for victory that can’t be taught or imitated. In that sense (and many others), he’s really pretty similar to Bob Knight, who doesn’t have the most impressive coaching tree, either (Coach K aside).

The first time I really introduced myself to Calhoun was in August, 2007, shortly after I took over the beat. He wasn’t enamored with my predecessor at the Register, and the very first words he said to me after I introduced myself was, “Well, I didn’t like the other guy …”

Straight and to the point, no doubt. You pretty much always know where you stand with Jim Calhoun.

Last night, myself and some other beat guys engaged in a #calhounmemories tweet-fest on Twitter. I don’t have the tenure of guys like Neill Ostrout or Ed Daigneault, so I didn’t have as many stories. But here are two of my favorites, told to me by other people:

*** UConn recruited both Kirk King and Austin Croshere back in the day. It got King, but Croshere went to Providence. Every time UConn played the Friars and Croshere hit a 3-pointer or a big hoop, Calhoun would twirl around to his assistants and scream, “Wrong guy!!!!”

*** At a coaches’ golf tournament a few years ago, Calhoun got what he considered an inconvenient tee time. While on the putting green surrounded by other coaches, Calhoun could apparently be heard muttering, “How many (bleeping) national championships do you have to win to get a good tee time around here!?!?!”

There ain’t two Jim Calhouns, that’s for sure. A true original. He’ll be missed on the sidelines.

Here's a feature I wrote on Tharon Mayes, the former New Haven high school star who went on to a successful career at Florida State, then Europe.

Why am I putting a story on Mayes on a UConn blog, you ask? Well, a quick look at his surname and you may be able to surmise that UConn fans may be very interested to hear what Mayes has to say.

Mayes is the father of Xavier Rathan-Mayes, the highly-touted Class of 2013 shooting guard who is a big-time UConn target. (Actually, Mayes is Xavier's stepfather -- he met Xavier's mom, Marilyn, when Xavier was about five).



According to Mayes, Xavier attended Cheshire Academy four years ago, as detailed in a nice story by the late, great Dave Solomon, but is now at Huntington Prep in West Virginia). Among the six schools he's "fond of", according to his dad: Florida State (Mayes's alma mater), UConn, Baylor, Alabama, Memphis and UCLA. There are others, as well. I apologize if I made it sound earlier like he had pared his list down to just those six.

Rathan-Mayes, who has made unofficials to both UConn and UCLA already, plans another unofficial to FSU sometime over the next couple of weeks. He'll narrow down his visits after taking the SAT's in September, according to Mayes. Xavier would like to commit early in November.

Tharon Mayes said that Jim Calhoun's coaching future is "a concern. He likes Kevin Ollie. Kevin’s been speaking to him, it’s definitely a school of interest. But that is something that’s a little scary.”

Here's what Tharon says about his son's game: "He can definitely stroke it. But I think, with him, what makes him tough is he plays both guard spots very well. It adds more to his game than him being a pure point guard or two-guard."

*** Meanwhile, Joey Natale of UConnBall.com caught up with Reggie Cameron after his visit to UConn on Tuesday. Guess what? The visit went "great."

*** Oh, and in the GHPA playoffs: Doug Wiggins had a triple-double (40 points, 10 boards, 10 assists) to lead Recycle Kings to a 152-145 win over Harte Nissan in Game 2 of the championship series. The decisive Game 3 will be tonight (Thursday) at 7 p.m. at Classical Magnet School.

UConn target Kuran Iverson added 36 points and eight rebounds and Jerome Dyson 30 and 11 for Recycle Kings.

Ryan Gomes had 34 and 10, Lamonte Ulmer 28 and 12 and Keith Cothran 27 and seven for Harte Nissan.

A year ago today, the Register and the entire journalism community suffered a great loss when longtime Register columnist Dave Solomon was killed in a one-car crash. He was on his way home from a UConn football practice.

I can't tell you how many times over the past year I've looked at a sports story -- whether it be UConn or some other local or national story -- and wondered, "What would Dave's take on this be?" "What kind of a column would he have written?" To think of what Dave would have written about UConn's APR situation and postseason ban, Jim Calhoun's status and future, the Penn State ugliness -- what a great loss to all of us who appreciate thoughtful writing on interesting, sometimes very important topics.

The Dave Solomon Scholarship at UConn has been established to forever keep his memory and spirit alive. Please take a moment to think of Dave at www.friends.uconn.edu/solomon.

Thanks.

For those wishing to pay final respects to longtime Register columnist Dave Solomon, his funeral will be on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at the B.C. Bailey Funeral Home in Wallingford.



Burial to follow at Beth Israel Cemetery, Dudley Avenue, Wallingford.

In lieu of flowers the family has asked that donations can be made in Dave's name to the Beth Israel Synagogue in Wallinford, or the Register Fresh Air Fund.

The Register lost a great writer and an even better man on Saturday evening. Dave Solomon, the Register's longtime sports columnist, died in a single-car accident on his way home from covering a UConn football team practice.

I first met Dave in 2004 when we were both covering a Red Sox-Yankees game, and he was as friendly and helpful then as he was the last time we spoke about a week ago.

The first thing I noticed about him as a reporter and writer was that he always looked for the story behind the story, the angle that perhaps no other writer in the room saw but yet made for a better and more intriguing column than anything anybody else would write. It's a trait I've always admired and continued to witness first-hand while working side-by-side with Dave over the past four years on the UConn men's basketball beat.

There's no doubt Dave is one of the best columnist I've ever known. He broke several major stories just in the few years I've known him -- including the Dolphins' hiring of Tony Sporano as their head coach, beating all the Miami beat guys to the punch.

I'm positive Dave could have written for any paper in the country, but he seemed perfectly content where he was, living in Meriden with his wonderful wife, Judy, and chronicling every angle of UConn sports and local sports in general -- not just baseball, football and basketball (OK, he wasn't crazy about hockey), but sports that needed more attention like boxing. He was a great advocate for local boxers and gave them more publicity than any writer in the state.

Maybe the truest mark of what a pro Dave will always be is the fact that he will be greatly missed not only by his colleagues but by the people he covered. People like Jim Calhoun, Geno Auriemma, Randy Edsall, etc. may not have always agreed with what Dave had to write and say, but they always respected his opinon. A writer really can't get a better compliment than that.

That's one of the first things Calhoun told me when I first introduced myself to him after taking over the UConn beat in 2007. Calhoun and Solomon may forever be linked by the infamous Ryan Gomes press conference in '04. But after his over-the-top reaction to Dave's line of questioning about what he may not have seen in Gomes as a recruit, Calhoun called Solomon the next day to apologize.

“With some guys, if they don’t show you the type of respect, you don’t quite feel the same," Calhoun said this morning. "Dave always showed respect to me. I’m going to get written about daily by guys like Dave, and he’s not going to back down. I think that made him even better. We locked horns a few times, but I maintain that we always had a great friendship. I really, really like Dave Solomon. God rest his soul, I will miss him.”

Here's some more of what Calhoun had to say:

“I go back with Dave to the first press conference I had in 1986. We’ve kind of been together the whole time. He’s one of the few.”

“Dave was an opinionated, strong-willed, great guy, and a true professional. And he could really write. I always told him when he really wrote, he was never hurtful, but he could hurt you because he could really write. People who can write can hurt you.”

“I consider him a friend, and at times a confidante. We’ve had many one, two, three-hour conversations … He’s truly a professional and a great person. To the Solomon family, I extend my condolences. Even those who disagreed with Dave’s opinion probably never disagreed with Dave as a person.”

“Into our 26th year, we still had a “Hi, how are you, what’s going on” type of deal. That’s truly indicative. At no point in time I didn’t speak to Dave. At times I agreed, at times disagreed, but I enjoyed his ideas, I liked talking to him. He’s going to be missed by fellow media members, but also by coaches. In his own way, he didn’t have a problem telling you what he thought, but he would always listen to you. That’s unique.”