PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas — When Jim Calhoun tells the story of UConn’s national championship season, he usually begins in Hawaii.

The Huskies defeated three strong teams — Wichita State, Michigan State and Kentucky — and when Kemba Walker boarded the team bus with the MVP trophy, his teammates stood and applauded.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before,” Calhoun says, “and, incidentally, that was repeated after the Big East tournament in New York.”

It was at the Maui Invitational that UConn learned to be a team, learned its leaders and its identity, and bonded. And it’s what teams of college-age kids look for when they leave home, board the plane together and play in faraway places with strange-sounding names. The Huskies, and seven other teams, are looking for that same intangible benefit in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas this week.

“Experiences like this can be extremely valuable,” said Donny Marshall, who played at UConn in the early 1990s. “If forces you out of your comfort zone, out of the comfort of your dorm room. You room with someone you don’t normally room with. My sophomore year, we played in Hawaii and we lost to an Ohio U team we should not have lost to on paper. We bonded, and we had great runs the next two years.”

Though Walker has moved on, several of the players from last year are back. There are also newcomers, and for them it’s a first experience on the road as college students.

Here they learn the necessity of acting responsibly in an environment with many temptations, of taking care to represent the school in an age where any youthful indiscretion can go viral on the Internet, and of looking out for each other in groups.

“At a tournament like this, you become like brothers,” said J.P. Prim, a senior with the University of North Carolina-Asheville. “And that’s the way a basketball team is supposed to do it.”

For so-called “mid-major” programs, the chance to play in tournaments helps prepare them for the season and the postseason by exposing them to better teams, bigger crowds, more attention and the “survive and advance” nature of tournament competition.

“This is where you learn about your team,” said veteran coach Bobby Cremins, who is in the Bahamas with his College of Charleston team.

While UConn is playing in the Bahamas, Fairfield is playing in the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Fla., and Sacred Heart is playing in the Cancun Challenge in Mexico.

“You hope they bond together,” said Sacred Heart coach Dave Bike, “and it gives you a different opportunity in a different situation. As kids look back at their college career, they’re going to remember this trip.”

In Hawaii last year, the Huskies first adopted their us-against-the-world mind-set. They were coming off a disappointing season in 2009-10 and were considered a young, inexperienced team.

“We felt like we had to prove ourselves,” Shabazz Napier said.

They did. Now, it’s more like the Huskies are trying to establish a world-against-us mentality.

“People talk about a national championship hangover,” Calhoun said. “There was April, May, June, July, August and September where everyone was telling us how wonderful we are. Now, we have to get that hunger back. We would make a good headline for someone, knocking off the defending national champions.”

UConn, Calhoun said, is looking to identify which players will assume leadership roles. Will, perhaps, Jeremy Lamb be the one treated like a conquering hero?

“When you have to play three games in three days, you learn about your team,” Calhoun said. “You can’t get this experience at home. If you have a negative experience, you lose a game, you have a matter of hours to get ready for the next one.”

The Huskies got to the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Monday and spent some free time at the various attractions in and about the sprawling hotel grounds. Roscoe Smith made his teammates laugh when he tried the “Leap of Faith,” a six-story water slide.

“I’ve been told the screams could be heard from very far away,” Calhoun said.

They have been practicing at a high school about 30 minutes away. On Wednesday, they had their first practice in the arena itself, a ballroom turned into a temporary court with about 4,000 bleacher seats. With the small crowd close in, and the low ceilings, it will be an unusual place to play basketball, another shared experience that figures to last the season.

Trips to exotic locales certainly do not hurt recruiting efforts. College of Charleston seniors have played in Hawaii, Puerto Rico and now the Bahamas. UNC Asheville coach Eddie Biedenbach sees it as a reward for players who have put in four years of hard work for his program.

“It’s an experience we try and give the individuals,” Bike said, “with school, basketball, and travel. These are all benefits that all of them appreciate at the end of their careers.”