St. Joe's decided that with the start of the 2018-19 academic year, it would become coeducational. Jim Calhoun: “And he’s here to win, and that’s his whole goal is to win. They say they've heard from like-minded current students and alumnae with similar concerns. That's what Calhoun has been brought in to change. Just months after its decision in 2017 to enroll men, St. Joe's hired Calhoun as a consultant and, eventually, its first men's basketball coach, solidifying the school's bet on the Calhoun Effect. Cardarelli brought Calhoun to meet Free. A week later, St. Joe's plays its first game, a win over William Paterson in front of 2,000 fans at Hartford's Trinity College. The school is intimate. There are news trucks outside and UConn beat writers inside. "It's like when you recruit someone. In its fight for relevance, St. Joe's has Calhoun on its side. About 60 people sit in O'Connell's wooden bleachers, including current student-athletes. It aims to prepare students for the next four years. "I did the best I could, psychologically, to make sure it wasn't getting to me," the coach says of working through his two-year fight. Sister Patricia Rooney, a 1958 graduate who's in her 22nd year on the school's board of trustees, sits on one of them. "We are going to spend the whole semester talking about prejudice.". These women also worry about losing field time with the eventual arrival of five men's sports. Calhoun knows what's in the St. Joe's DNA -- and that that DNA can't get lost in this rush to change. Calhoun, perhaps the greatest builder in college basketball history, was just the front man. Not only has St. Joe's never had men's basketball, but it also has never had undergraduate men. But we're good for St. Joe's, and St. Joe's is good for us.". "We ran all the numbers many times with many experts," the president says. Former Huskies, men and women, return en masse for his annual charity game -- enough to fill four rosters. JIM CALHOUN STEPS up to a lectern at center court in the O'Connell Center. If you're not paying attention, you'll miss the training room, which is the size of a closet. Instead, it added 98, bringing the school's enrollment to more than 900 for the first time in three years. Will the College Football Playoff continue to be dominated by the big powers like Alabama and Ohio State? Everyone here wants the 98 incoming men to acclimate to instead of eradicate that atmosphere. If Alex Rodriguez or some other highly paid athlete were to do that, he would be vilified. It'll be a work in progress amid all that's changing. "With any new thing," Bilbraut says, "there's a potential for rejection.". It's a Division III team on 50,000 watts. Calhoun asked Cardarelli to give him three reasons. His newest relationship, with this tiny, private, Catholic school in West Hartford, Connecticut, three miles from where his UConn teams played in the state's capital city of Hartford, is a symbiotic one.