May 30, 2008 UConn’s Jim Calhoun announces he has cancer Play video

(Brian Burnell, NECN) - Longtime University of Connecticut Men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun is battling cancer for a second time. The coach held a press conference Friday afternoon announcing that he is being treated for skin cancer.

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University of Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun is in the Basketball Hall of Fame in large part because of the two National Championships he led the Huskies to. He has built the premier college basketball program in New England, one of the top 5 in the country. Every season is a challenge looking back at last year...

Calhoun: As the season started to wind down I was winding down and feeling, quite frankly, very tired. More so than normal.

Calhoun also noticed a boil on the right side of his neck. He went in for a checkup and ended up seeing Dr. Jeffrey Spiro at the UConn Medical Center. He did a biopsy on the mass which had grown to the size of a golf ball.

Calhoun: He called me shortly thereafter, a couple days after, to tell me the results and told me that I had cancer.

Dr. Jeffrey Spiro: What we call squamous cell carcinoma. Squamous cell cancer. At that point, I was talking to coach and we realized that he had a similar type of cancer, squamous cell cancer, removed from the skin of his cheek in very close proximity actually to where this mass was...just a little bit above it...last year.

Dr. Spiro says it is likely that first bit of cancer spread to the lymph node. The node was removed

along with 37 others and part of Calhoun’s salivary gland during surgery in early May. Tests on that tissue came back negative. He will undergo six weeks of radiation treatment this summer as a precaution.

Dr. Jeffrey Spiro: To the best of my knowledge, the coach is cancer free now.

Just as any of us would, Coach Calhoun says when he first got this news he thought about his family. His wife, Pat, their children, their grandchildren. But he also thought about his extended family - his basketball family. Two guys in particular, who he's watching right now, go head to head in the NBA playoffs. Rick Hamilton for the Detroit pistons and Ray Allen for the Boston Celtics.

Calhoun: Those are my kids. Watching them both actually play defense is really, really exciting. My point being that I really thoroughly enjoy what I do. I enjoy my kids. My own family and my basketball family.