Hearts are heavy in Connecticut this week.
There is no way to talk about the fact that there will be a basketball game tonight, without talking about the fact that it’s not nearly the most important thing happening in our state.
Last Friday, twenty families lost their children, and six teachers lost their lives protecting them at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The entire state is grieving those losses, and that includes the UConn men’s basketball team, who face Maryland East-Shore tonight at the XL Center at 7 p.m.
There will be a moment of silence before the game tonight, and before many games to come. This is not a tragedy to be soon forgotten.
Members of the men’s basketball team were present at a vigil in Storrs last night, and Coach Kevin Ollie is considering bringing his team to Newtown to show support for the community. The team will be wearing that support with commemorative patches on their uniforms, which they hope to have ready for tonight’s game.
The Huskies will undoubtedly be playing tonight with this horrific event in their minds, but they will also be playing with the hope of bringing some sense of happiness to a state sorely in need of it.
“We’re going to try,” Shabazz Napier told the Hartford Courant. “We want to put joy and happiness in the eyes of as many people that we can. I want to do what I do best, go out and play basketball with the energy and excitement that I can bring.”
Notes:
- The last time these two teams faced was in 1987, when the Huskies beat the Hawks 102-63. That Huskies team featured star Cliff Robinson.
- Maryland East-Shore has not won a game this season, bringing a 0-9 record into tonight’s game. They last played Dec. 8, in a 92-60 loss against Cincinnati. The Hawks losses have all been by 10 points or more this season, including 30-plus point losses to Maryland and Cincinnati, and 10-point losses to Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Delaware State. The Hawks have already faced some Huskies this season, when they lost by 15 to the Houston-Baptist Huskies.
- Sophomore guard Kyree Jones leads the Hawks in scoring, averaging 16.6 points per game, hitting 40 percent of his field goals, including 30 percent of those behind the three-point line.
- Enoch Wolf replaced Tyler Olander in the line up against Harvard on Dec. 7, but did not grab a single rebound in the game. Rebounding has been a major sore spot for the team this season – they’ve been outrebounded in eight out of nine games – so look see what adjustments Coach Ollie makes for tonight’s game.
- The Huskies haven’t played a game in 10 days; they’ve been on break for final exams. They last faced Harvard in a 57-49 win on Dec. 7. DeAndre Daniels scored a career-high 23 points against the Crimson.
