UConn confidently entered the Big East tournament, with a 5-match winning streak

news7g03/05/2023

1 5 minutes read

UConn confidently entered the Big East tournament, with a 5-match winning streak

Michael Cohen

College football and college basketball writer

Danny Hurley greeted each of his starters as they left the field in the final seconds of the game. by UConn important victory Villanova. I hug André Jackson Jr., his Swiss Army knife, with a slap in the back. He exchanged celebratory profanities with Alex Karaban, his hot shot power forward. He embraces his star, Adama Sanogofor another strong effort in low post.

Part of Hurley’s excitement has to do with how well the Huskies are doing: five wins in a row and eight out of nine as they head into the tournament. Big East Tournament after one 71-59 victory over an old rival at the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday night. Another part may involve the removal of a Wildcat monkey on Hurley’s back.

Hurley entered the season with a 1-5 record against Villanova since taking over from Connecticut in 2018, although some of those games were non-conference games as the Huskies were still mired in the United States Athletics Championships. Ky. The only win in that period came on a night when Hurley was sent off at the end of the first half; Assistant coach Kimani Young guided UConn the rest of the way. Even this year’s win over Villanova in December was accompanied by a pair of asterisks: famed head coach Jay Wright is no longer hanging around on the sidelines; and the best player of the Wildcats, Justin Moorestill recovering from a torn Achilles.

So Saturday night was special for Hurley, for his players, for a show that believes it can finally host another NCAA Tournament. The Huskies will head into New York City with the same confidence they showed in their 14-0 start to the season.

Jackson continues to grow

On the morning of December 31, UConn players and coaches woke up with an undefeated record and second place nationwide. They were staying in a hotel somewhere near the Cintas Center in Cincinnati before a highly anticipated match with-No. 22 Xavierwhose head coach, Sean Miller, installed one of the most effective offenses in the country during the first season of his second term with the Musketeers.

But by mid-afternoon, after an impressive 83-73 win for Xavier, it was one of Miller’s defensive strategies that helped his team win and changed the term of the race for the Big East title of the year. now. Miller and his coaching staff instructed any player guarding Jackson to slack off in the outer circle and hide in the lane instead, clogging the void for Sanogo, Player of the Year first. season of the tournament. Jackson, a notoriously underperforming 3-pointer (29.1% of his career), took the bait. He managed to make his top 14 shots of the season, including 12 inexplicably from outside the arc, and took possession after possession for the Huskies.

Since then, most opponents have implemented a similar strategy to protect Jackson, albeit to varying degrees. He shot just 15 to 46 from the field during a period as the Huskies lost six of their eight games between late December and late January when UConn failed to contest the Big East crown in the regular season. While he wasn’t the only problem on a team that, for a brief moment, seemed to have forgotten how to defend, Jackson’s lack of confidence and reassurance when attacking led to the Huskies playing with the scoreline. 4 vs 5 at the end of that ring.

Much of UConn’s late-season resurgence can be tied to Jackson’s insight into how, and when, he can contribute to a foul that still ranks in the national top 10. in terms of efficiency – an improvement that the coaching staff also deserves credit for. . By taking on the role of chopper, passer and pacemaker in the transition, Jackson has hit a greater strike rating of 115 times over the last seven games. That’s a mark he’s eclipsed just twice during the aforementioned Huskies winter skiing.

The breadth of his skill set was on display again in Saturday’s win over Villanova: a coast-to-coast combo for UConn’s first basket of the game; a touch pass for Sanogo to make an easy pitch; a counter-attack turned explosive during the transition ending with a falling pass Tristen Newton for a pointer 3; a pair of 3 pointers to your face in the second half.

He finished with 10 points, seven rebounds and five assists in his fifth consecutive standout performance.

“The things he does for the team – the leadership, the energy, the defense – unless he has steals and saves, they don’t show up,” Hurley said earlier this week after the fight. win the gap first DePaul.

“And I’m so happy for him because he’s the most amazing person you can coach.”

Jordan Hawkins wears UConn

Jordan Hawkins scored 24 points on Saturday night to help UConn win 71-59 over Villanova.

All on Karaban caravan

As the season began, Hurley and his staff envisioned a three-way scoring attack featuring Sanogo, the sophomore sniper. Jordan Hawkins and before East Carolina defended Newton, one of the most coveted backcourt picks in last spring’s transfer portal.

Now a senior, Newton averaged 17.7 points, 5 assists and 4.8 rebounds per game in his final season with the Pirates. He has managed to score 42 more goals than anyone else on the team and relies more on volume (12.6 shots per game) than efficiency, especially from outside the 3-point line, where he scored 33.3% on 4.8 attempts per game.

Although Newton has played much better in the second half of the season – he entered Saturday’s game averaging 12.1 points in his last 11 games – the correction has not always been smooth. He failed to hit the double-digits scoring 13 goals in his first 19 games for the Huskies and endured a particularly brutal time with 30 spins in 13 games including a losing streak in January.

As Newton adapted to a higher level of competition, red-shirt freshman Karaban became a reliable scoring pick alongside Sanogo (9 points, 9 rebounds ahead of Villanova) and Hawkins (24 points before Villanova) and Hawkins. Villanova). Karaban is a promising four-star candidate in the 2021 recruitment cycle, who graduated from high school early to enroll at UConn in the middle of last year. He trained with the Huskies from January to March but never appeared in a game.

However, Karaban’s early experience prepared him to step into a starting role early in his first season in Storrs. The combination of his size (6-8, 210 pounds) and his ability to shoot around (39.4%) make him the ideal four-stretch player who never encroached on Sanogo’s space in low, and Karaban has scored 14 3-pointers in his first eight games. He quickly won the first of five Big East Freshman Honors in mid-November.

After an 11-point drive in a big win over DePaul earlier this week and two weeks out of the explosive 16-point tie against Providence last week, Karaban once again played a vital role for the Huskies on Saturday night. He scored 16 points in an effective 6 to 8 shot to stabilize Connecticut before Hawkins started the game in the second half. He turned his only counter-attack into a well-timed counter-attack that gave the Huskies a double-digit 54-43 lead and scored again in the next possession to keep the Wildcats at bay.

It was an ideal way to end the regular season for a player many believed would win the league’s Freshman award.

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with a focus on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.

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