GLENDALE, Ariz. — The UConn men's basketball team settled deeper into the bizarre world of the Final Four on Friday afternoon, holding a public workout atop a raised court at the center of a football stadium's expanse. The pep band shot music into its cavernous surroundings , the fight song echoing and becoming a bit distorted, as the Huskies dunked and took jump shots and chatted and laughed.

This was all informal but mandatory, part of the usual carnival-like atmosphere, general acclimation to the silly sights and sounds that always surround the last leg of something so serious to those involved.

This was in Glendale, once a dusty desert town and now a city of 250,000. The real basketball work took place Friday morning in nearby Tempe, a closed-door practice on the campus of Arizona State University. This, overall, is “PHX 2024 ”, the final NCAA Tournament stop for UConn, Alabama, Purdue and NC State.

“A lot of emotion,” coach Dan Hurley said on stage during a press conference. “Going into the season, obviously we talked about Brooklyn to Boston to Phoenix. We really wanted the Big East regular season and the Big East tournament championship. the ones we hadn't had. We had the regional championship last year. We won the national championship. Just a run that this group has been on has been historic — historic within the UConn program, and the first defending national champ to get back to the Final Four since 2007. It's been an historic run. You do take little moments to appreciate it, but they don't last long.”

The Huskies (35-3) face Alabama (25-11) Saturday night in the second of two national semifinals, with the winners meeting Monday night for the championship. Whether UConn, looking for its sixth title, takes an historic feel to historic fact by winning Monday and being remembered as one of the greatest teams in sport's history, this is the last road trip and the closing scene for a group that has captivated Connecticut's imagination like the 2022-23 version before it.

To think, just weeks from now, so many players milling about the UConn locker room on Friday — fancy name plates above locker stalls, fruit cups and sandwiches to pick at, folding chairs with colorful logos — could be in so many different places in just a few weeks' time.