HARTFORD, April 7 - First came basketball. Then came a ton of money, more than $2 billion from the state toward an ambitious 20-year campus construction plan. Then came this week, when the University of Connecticut men's and women's basketball teams delivered twin national championships on consecutive nights.

"When you think of UConn," Diana Taurasi, who led the women's team to its third consecutive title, said after defeating the University of Tennessee on Tuesday night, "you think of domination."

Winning basketball has raised the profile of the university for more than a decade, and along the way, it has also increased support for UConn - some call it an obsession - among the school's fans in Connecticut and the politicians who represent them.

But in the glow of the championships, the school is claiming a larger victory - rising test scores of entering freshmen, more selective admission standards, better research and academic facilities and a reputation that improves every semester.

"There's no question that a lot of the academic excitement arose from the basketball success," Philip E. Austin, the university's president, said in an interview from a mobile phone while he was returning from watching the women's team in New Orleans on Tuesday.

Even with the revenue of championships and television contracts, successful sports programs have not proved to be a panacea for schools seeking to increase their academic stature and financial stability. UConn continues to wrestle with its annual budget, and last year some faculty members and administrators chose to forgo raises rather than have the school face job cuts. While UConn cites higher test scores and increasing enrollment, other state schools without great sports teams do, too.

But in interviews with a range of people close to the school - from students to alumni to business people who hire UConn graduates to the director of the faculty union - all say the old "cow college" in the state's rural northeast has come a long way in the last decade.

And many say it is no accident that the new success in both sports and enrollment has happened in Connecticut, where sports teams are few, but where public education is prized and where having no one else to cheer for has left devotion for the home team undiluted.

"It's the reality of our part of the country," said Mr. Austin. "We're surrounded by Boston and New York. This is our little niche."

Building dominant basketball programs has taken nearly two decades at the university, after the arrival of the women's coach, Geno Auriemma, in 1985 and the men's coach, Jim Calhoun, in 1986. But construction on the campus in tiny Storrs, Conn., has transformed a faceless and by many accounts dreary and declining college outpost in less than half that time.

Alumni who watched the school fade now return to a campus where they have to ask for directions. Most undergraduate students live on campus, many in new dormitories, and prospective faculty members and researchers are drawn to sparkling new buildings and laboratories.

"I'm not sure the color of the bricks would appeal to them, but then you go inside and see the laboratories," said Edward Marth, executive director of the UConn chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which has 1,300 members at the school. "The university needs it, desperately needs it. When I came here the buildings were terrible."

While there is near unanimity that UConn is in resurgence, change has come with a stunning price tag. Beginning in 1995, when other states were tightening higher-education budgets, the Connecticut General Assembly passed a giant revitalization program called UConn 2000. In the years since, the state has committed $2.3 billion to capital improvements on campus.

In turn, UConn has evolved from being a "safety school" for state residents to a college of choice that draws, and often must deny, students from across New England and beyond.

UConn's primary competition for students comes from Boston College, Boston University, Syracuse University and Rutgers, according to Mr. Austin.

UConn has more than 26,000 students, with about 7,000 of them in graduate programs including law, dentistry, medicine and social work.

Freshmen entering UConn in 2003 scored on average 18 points higher on the SAT than those entering the previous fall, and 139 points higher than those entering in 1995. The average SAT score is now 1167. Between 1995 and 2003, 462 valedictorians and salutatorians enrolled at UConn. Rankings by U.S. News & World Report placed UConn among the top 25 public universities in the nation.

While the school grows, some say, the size and experience of the faculty has not yet caught up with the construction boom.

"If you're going to have a new facility you ought to be able to staff it properly," Mr. Marth said.

The school lost almost 100 faculty members to retirement in the past few years. A report on Princetonreview.com gives UConn a low rating for using too many teaching assistants in its upper-level courses. The school is closing its geology and geophysics department.

But most assessments say the big picture is promising.

"Both the quality of the engineering graduates and the quality of the basketball teams have improved over the past decade," said John F. Cassidy, senior vice president for science and technology at the United Technologies Corporation. Four years ago, the corporation gave UConn a $4 million gift for four endowed professorships in engineering-related studies, scholarships and research grants.

"In the past few years, we have hired more engineering graduates from UConn than any other school," Dr. Cassidy said. "The best UConn graduate is in the same ranks as a graduate from M.I.T. or Stanford or Georgia Tech or pick-your-favorite top-notch engineering school. UConn graduates are holding their own in my view, and that was not the case five or 10 years ago."