An Offseason To-Do List

By most reasonable standards, UConn’s 2014-2015 was a disappointment. One year after winning the fourth national championship in the program’s history, the Huskies slogged through a 20-15 season culminating with their first-round loss in the NIT this past Wednesday.

Senior guard Ryan Boatright is departing — as are scholarship brainiac Pat Lenehan and Dan Guest – but the rest of the roster likely will return next season. There are reasons to be optimistic and reasons to be apprehensive about UConn’s future. Below is a to-do list to ensure a successful campaign.

Player Development

Much of UConn’s trouble this season — especially early in the season — can be attributed to inexperience. Aside from Boatright, much of the rotation was made up of freshmen and sophomores. Juniors Omar Calhoun and Phil Nolan both emerged at different points to fill significant roles but both played less than 20 minutes per game.

The key to next season will be capitalizing on the ups and downs of this year and using them to fuel improvements. Daniel Hamilton appears to be a budding star, but he will need to improve his jump shot (34.3 percent from three isn’t going to cut it), and will need to maintain aggressiveness throughout the game. The roster as a whole passed up too many open shots. Next year’s Huskies will need Hamilton to be a focal point of their offense and he should be ready to meet the challenge. Given the talent he showed during his first year in Storrs, that seems a reasonable expectation.

Rodney Purvis — UConn’s leading scorer down the stretch as Boatright dealt with injury — will also need to improve his shot (36% from three), but also seems destined to fill the leadership role vacated by Boatright. Assertiveness is key for Purvis. At his best, he can beat almost anyone off the dribble and get to the rim. At times though, he can be hesitant. Purvis needs to lead by example and set the tone for UConn’s offense.

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Amida Brimah will finally get a full summer in the weight room. He desperately needs to get stronger and improve his rebounding (4.4 per game). Brimah took big steps forward this season, especially with his discipline in avoiding foul calls, but UConn needs him to be more consistent on both ends of the court.

All three need to improve their free throw shooting. They shot a combined 62.3 percent from the line this season. It’s very difficult to win games when you’re giving away almost 40 percent of your free points.

A Point Guard

With Boatright departing, someone needs to take over as the main ball-handler and floor general. The in-house candidates are Purvis, Terrence Samuel, and Sam Cassell, Jr., but each offers limitations. Purvis is a scoring guard at heart. His assist numbers (1.2 per game) aren’t particularly heartening. He also needs to improve his ball-handling and decision-making.

Samuel is a better ball-handler than Purvis, but without a jump shot, is often a liability on offense. Not having a point guard who can spread the floor allows the opposing defense to key in on shooters and collapse in the paint around Brimah.

Cassell has the name and bloodline for the job, but he appears to lack the requisite athleticism to be a high-major point guard. He shot very poorly this year, and that needs to improve if he is to have any real utility going forward.

Incoming freshman Jalen Adams will also get a chance to be the team’s starting point guard. Like Purvis, Adams is more of a scoring guard than a true point guard, but he has shown an ability to lead his team (Brewster Academy) as the floor general. Adams is used to playing in a talent-laden offense. Brewster features seven players heading to high-level college programs next season, including fellow guards Justin Simon (#22, Rivals) and Donovan Mitchell (#32), who are attending Arizona and Louisville, respectively, next season. It was Adams, however, who served as primary ball-handler and leading scorer as he led Brewster to another championship this season. He seems to be the logical first choice to take over for Boatright.

Historically though, UConn has been reluctant to hand the keys to the team over to a freshman point guard. Taliek Brown started on the NIT-bound 2000-2001 team and averaged almost eight points and five assists per game. Before him, Khalid El-Amin was a phenom on the 1998 squad. Over the past decade, the best freshman guards have been handcuffed to more experienced players as they got their feet wet.

The other option for next year’s Huskies would be to let Hamilton handle the ball as a point forward. He will arguably be the team’s best passer and was often the instigator on UConn’s fast-break attempts. He would need to cut down on his turnovers, but his talent certainly warrants a look in this role. The Huskies aren’t short of options, but someone will need to step up and claim the job.

Fill Roster Holes

An underreported flaw of this year’s team was the self-sabotage that resulted in depth problems. When DeAndre Daniels went pro and Leon Tolksdorf transferred, Ollie replaced them with walk-ons Pat Lenehan and Nnamdi Amilo, who played a combined nine minutes all season. Even with Adams and PF Steve Enoch coming in, the Huskies still have two open scholarships. One year of unpreparedness cannot become two. Ollie needs to fill those spots with productive players.

Unfortunately, most of the high-level recruits that UConn was targeting are now off the board. Ollie and his staff missed on a bunch of potential fits, including Isaiah Briscoe, Derrick Jones and Prince Ali, who decommitted from UConn when Adams signed.

Diamond Stone, a supremely talented center from Milwaukee, is still on the board, though UConn’s chances of landing him have faded over the last few months — Stone’s academic eligibility is also tenuous, according to recruiting insiders. 3-star point guards Jahshire Hardnett (Mississippi) and Nych Smith (Tennessee) are still targets, and if Vermont Academy swingman Bruce Brown reclassifies to 2015, UConn is figured to be a strong candidate to land him.

That said, UConn still needs some combination of shooter, rebounder and ball-handler to cover up for the deficiencies they displayed this season.

Three-point shooting is an obvious problem. Non-Boatright players shot under 33 percent from long range this past season. Hamilton and Purvis should improve. Perhaps Omar Calhoun will as well (30 percent career), but adding a 40 percent shooter to the mix would make next year’s team much harder to defend against.

In the front-court, Ollie could use a backup to Brimah who can rebound. Phil Nolan provided a lift on defense, but rebounding has never been his strong suit. The team’s strongest rebounder for much of the season was Kentan Facey, but he faded late and lost his starting spot. Rakim Lubin had some positive moments, but will need significant development in the offseason to become a more regular contributor.

While the Huskies have clear needs (and open scholarships), they also must be weary of mortgaging future recruiting flexibility to fill short term needs. If Ollie can land Brown or Stone, great. If not, he should make a hard run at fifth-year seniors – one-year options that can help the team but leave room for any 2016 recruits. For a list of some interesting fifth-year candidates, read this article by Peter.

Improve the Coaching:

Kevin Ollie is a great man and a great mentor. His players also play hard, display strong character, and genuinely seem to adore their coach. He won the national championship in only his second year on the job and beat several Hall of Fame coaches in the process. But he has been out-coached this season.

Often times, the team seemed unable to make adjustments mid-game. They struggled mightily against both zone and high-pressure defenses. Their offensive sets were incredibly limited, resulting in easy-to-defend possessions and many poor shot attempts.

Some of these ills were a result of an unbalanced, inexperienced roster, but some were the byproduct of poor strategy and unpreparedness.

Ollie earned his contract extension and may well go on to win more rings before his UConn career is over, but right now, it looks like he needs more help. And that means shuffling the assistant coaching staff.

Because of his Xs-and-Os shortcomings, Ollie could use a strategic mind beside him. Many collegiate coaches delegate play-calling responsibilities to their assistants. UConn could do the same. Bring in a guy who can pull out the whiteboard and figure out how to, say, run a quality inbounds play, or to get an open look at the end of a close game.

Ollie also needs help recruiting. It seems that former UConn guard Ricky Moore is being groomed for this role, and may very well succeed at it. But it’s undeniable that UConn has missed out on a lot of high-level recruits that seemed to hold a lot of admiration for Ollie, but still wound up at other schools. A few misses happen — understandable — but when you’re missing close on so many elite high schoolers, it’s time to rethink the strategy.

Because of the incredible history of the program, and Ollie’s success in 2014, it’s easy to forget that he’s still a relative neophyte in the coaching profession. As his players and staff develop around him, we expect Ollie to develop as well.

Spice Up Play Style

UConn games were boring this season. They cracked 80 points four times: wins over the already-boring Coppin St., Columbia, and CCSU, and then the best game of the season, when they defeated #21 SMU on March 1st.

They mustered only 64.2 points per game — 259th in the nation. They averaged only 11.8 assists per game — 241st. Even the baskets they scored were the result of long possessions and isolation plays. Their 20 wins were mainly attributable to stout defense — opponents averaged only 60 points per game — and a terrible conference schedule.

The teams that made UConn into a national powerhouse played a far more exciting brand of basketball. Even during the defense-centric days of the Big East, and against far superior opponents, the Huskies managed to score. A lot. During Ollie’s four-year playing career, his teams scored over 81 points per game.

College basketball as a whole is experiencing a troubling lack of offense at the moment. Only five teams in the country averaged over 80 points per game this season. There’s plenty of reasons why. The talent level has diminished. Coaches are worse. AAU ball has encouraged bad habits. And the refereeing has become almost farcically poor.

This is bad news for everyone, but uniquely for UConn. Put harshly, they play in a terrible conference that can’t garner any attention outside of their anchor cities. Casual basketball fans outside of Connecticut aren’t rushing to their televisions to watch UConn beat USF 58-44, or to lose to Temple 57-53 — in overtime! Winning cures a lot of ills, but not enough. The team also needs to be fun to watch. It’s what will keep fans buying tickets when East Carolina arrives in Hartford in February, and it’s what will keep their highlights on SportsCenter and their names on the mind of the general basketball public.

Summary

This piece isn’t meant as an indictment of UConn’s roster or staff, or as a doomsday manifesto. It serves merely as wish list, providing some big, and some small, recommendations to get UConn back to the top of the college basketball food chain.

Agree? Disagree? Have other suggestions? Leave them in the comments.