UConn improved to 4-1 on the season by beating Cornell on Tuesday night, 91-74. It was the first of three straight games against weak opponents for the Huskies coming off an up-and-down trip to New York last week.
While it’s hard to draw too many conclusions from these early season buy games (assuming you don’t lose to Wagner and Northeastern, hypothetically), let’s draw too many conclusions anyway.
The Good
Jalen Adams looked like the best player in the conference. He scored 21 points by dominating the mid-range and getting to the rim with ease. His three-point shot wasn’t falling (1-4) but he found ways to hurt Cornell without it. The most uplifting part of his performance was his ability to create space with his dribble. During the last few seasons we’ve seen a lot of UConn dribbling without a lot of UConn purpose. On Tuesday, Adams used his ball-handling skills — and some quality high screens — to get in position to score. Sometimes that meant taking his guy off the dribble to the rim for a layup, and others he managed to separate far enough to get an open jumper or a floater in the lane. As we’ve mentioned, this UConn team can only be good if Adams is consistently dominant. He was against Cornell.
UConn got torched early by Cornell’s Princeton offense. That’s bad. What was good however, was how quickly the Huskies adjusted and put a stop to the open backdoor cuts that plagued the game’s first ten minutes or so. The recipe for UConn to win is going to change game-by-game. This season we’ve already seen Josh Carlton and Eric Cobb alternatively be the best player on the floor. We also saw UConn make a billion threes against Syracuse. The key to winning a lot of games this year will be adjusting rapidly to maximize whatever is going to work that night. Dan Hurley did a great job of that on Tuesday by getting his team to change its defensive mindset to swing the game back to their advantage.
Christian Vital played his best game of the season, scoring 19 points and playing under control on both ends of the ball. Vital’s success will often come down to shot selection. He has the ability to be a knock-down three-point shooter but his percentages (especially last season) are ugly because of so many bad attempts. Early against Cornell, it looked like Vital might’ve been in for a long night. He buried his first jumper even though it wasn’t a great look and air-balled the next. After that he settled down, made five of his next 11 attempts, played stellar defense and got to the line six times. That’s a damn fine night’s work. Hopefully Vital truly buys into Hurley’s system and continues to improve his decision-making on offense.
After some sloppy ball-handling in New York it looked like UConn might have a turnover problem. That problem was largely solved on Tuesday. The Huskies only turned the ball over 12 times (including several when the game was well in hand). We’ve touched on this in the past, but UConn is going to have to win games on the margins this year. The team doesn’t do any one thing well enough to carry them to victory so instead they have to do a lot of things just slightly more efficiently than their opponents. Taking care of the ball and not giving away possessions is one of those things.
On a similar note, this win was satisfying because it didn’t feature an out-of-the-normal performance. Other than Jalen playing very well, no one really outperformed expectations. The team didn’t catch fire from deep like against Syracuse. It was just a good, solid team performance that resulted in a blowout win. That’s kind of important because it shows that UConn’s path to victory is replicable. If the Huskies play this exact same game against the middle of the pack AAC teams, they’ll probably win. And if they happen to catch a flukey hot streak against Arizona or Villanova or UCF, they might win those games too. Essentially, UConn set the standard for what an average performance looks like, and it looks like a win. That’s good.
A nice feature to this team — and a byproduct of its newfound uptempo offense — is the ability to go on runs. During the Jim Calhoun era, this was a UConn staple. The game would be close, you’d blink, and the Huskies would be up 14. This year’s team obviously doesn’t have the offensive firepower of those classic predecessors but they did use a 16-2 run in the first half to create all the breathing run they’d need and some smaller seven and eight point runs to turn the game into a blowout. That’s neat against bad teams because it’s good to run them out of the gym, but it’s critical against good teams when the Huskies will have trouble scoring out of the half court and will need transition-based runs to play catch up later in the season.
I promise we’ll stop mentioning this after every game, but the Hurley Effect remains in place. In addition to the aforementioned mid-game adjustments (new!) and the uptempo offense (new!) we also got a continuation of the on-court (and, frankly, on the sidelines) effort that Hurley wants to be a hallmark of his UConn teams.
The Huskies made Jim Boeheim’s kid have a bad night. Lil Jimmy was 1-8 from the floor in 20 minutes of action. Cool.
The Bad
The lack of frontcourt depth is kind of a problem. Josh Carlton struggled with foul trouble and with defending a smaller Cornell team. Eric Cobb did as well and barely played as a result (seven minutes). With Isaiah Whaley and Mamadou Diarra injured and Sid Wilson still suspended, Tyler Polley ended up playing center for large chunks of the game. He played well! But that’s crazy. Working some of the MIA bigs back into the lineup ASAP is important.
This is kind of nitpicking since the overall team three-point percentage is significantly higher than last year, but I still think it’s going to be a problem. The Huskies were 6-19 from deep on Tuesday. In the four games that weren’t against Syracuse, the team is shooting 31.9 percent from three. If you’re like me and concerned that the Cuse game was an aberration, then that’s reason for concern — though not especially surprising if you’ve watched UConn play the last few years. Fortunately, this team appears to be infinitely more equipped to score in other ways. Being even an average shooting team will make this team very dangerous over the long haul.
Alterique Gilbert looked a little off to me. He just looked a split second slower than normal on offense. He couldn’t quite get to the spot on the floor he wanted as he did against Syracuse last week. His shot wasn’t falling (2-9) but whatever, that happens. The good news is that he ran the offense while mitigating turnovers and found ways to get to the line (5-6) while not really looking like himself.
Cornell shouldn’t shoot 46.2 percent against UConn. The Huskies’ defense looks much better this season but it’s worth noting that it still has work to do. Granted, Cornell’s Matt Morgan is somehow Steph Curry and absolutely torched UConn, making the overall numbers look worse — the Huskies did a good job handling everyone else. But still, we’ve gotta nitpick after a resounding win.
Up Next
New Hampshire, Saturday, noon, XL, SNY.
