Maryland loss shines light on UConn’s early season problems

There’s no shame in losing to Maryland. There’s plenty of shame in losing to Maryland like this.

In just about every aspect, UConn’s 76-66 loss to the Terrapins at the Jimmy V Classic Tuesday represented a bad night for UConn men’s basketball.

It was already bad, well before head coach Kevin Ollie inexcusably lost his temper in the waning minutes of a UConn comeback.

This game, though certainly not a death knell for any of UConn’s goals this season, highlighted several glaring problems about this team that can and must be addressed:

The Slow Starts

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It happened against Gonzaga, and we were disappointed. But hey — good teams come out and play like crap sometimes. You don’t like it, but you can live with it once.

It happened again against Sacred Heart. But hey — it was a buy game sandwiched between a trip to the Bahamas and a game at MSG against a top-10 opponent. It happened twice in a row, which was a little concerning, but not the end of the world.

On Tuesday, in front of a sold-out crowd at the World’s Most Famous Arena, it wasn’t likely to happen again. The Huskies looked damn near uncontrollable during warm-ups — so pumped for the game that it appeared they might come out with a little too much fire.

Instead, UConn fell behind 19-6 and saw its deficit balloon to 20 in the first half. The Huskies looked woefully unprepared, with no discernible offensive game plan and no clear way to stop Diamond Stone or Melo Trimble.

After UConn’s furious comeback bid fell short again, Daniel Hamilton said what we all know:

“We gotta play like that from the beginning. We just gotta play like that throughout the rest of the season to be successful.”

And after one, even two games like this, that’s a fair quote. After three straight, including this last game in one of the great atmospheres in all of college basketball? It doesn’t quite cut it.

That’s not to put the blame entirely on Hamilton. To be honest, I don’t know where the blame goes. It could be on Ollie, for failing to prepare the team on a tactical level. It could be on the team captains for not properly addressing the issue. I’m not in the locker room. But the “we need to do better” quotes are starting to ring hollow.

Kevin Ollie’s substitution patterns

This was another issue that could have been justified or reasoned away over the last couple weeks if you tried hard enough. Again, not tonight.

On a night when the Terrapins dominated inside (45-24 on the glass, 40-30 on points in the paint), Amida Brimah played just 18 minutes. Now it’s true that he picked up two fouls in the first half, which limited his role. But he disappeared (literally) for periods in the second half as well.

That wasn’t the only issue. During UConn’s comeback in the second half, Hamilton also disappeared.

Then there were stretches in the first half when the wheels were falling off, yet Sam Cassell Jr. and Omar Calhoun were both in the game. No disrespect to them, but those two are hardly the guys you want in the game when you’re trying to stop an opposing team’s run.

If there’s a method to Ollie’s madness, it’s hard to figure out.

Not getting to the foul line 

Trimble took more free throws himself (15) than the entire UConn team (12).

Tyler wrote about this problem yesterday and provided a good analysis, so give it a read. He notes that the Huskies don’t often target their post players, which helps explain it. Even so, Huskies at the 4 and 5 spot combined to take 15 field goals last night and shot just two free throws.

After the game, Ollie chalked this up to his players not being tough enough.

Ultimately, Maryland’s bigs just played better than UConn’s on Tuesday, no matter who the Huskies trotted out there. But Shonn Miller and Brimah are good players. Better than they get credit for.

Is toughness a factor? Decide for yourself.

Most importantly: Accountability

Note: On a personal level, I really like Kevin Ollie. As I’ve mentioned before, our paths crossed quite a bit over the summer, and he was always kind. Away from the game, I don’t have a bad word to say about him.

Despite the above note, his behavior and his reaction to it on Tuesday were a bad look, and one has to hope that it doesn’t underscore an even bigger problem.

Ollie, with his star player sitting next to him in the press conference after the game, took no responsibility for the already infamous technical foul that stopped a UConn run in its tracks after the Huskies had clawed within three.

If you need a refresher, here’s the Vine:

Compare that to his explanation:

“I just hit the stand where the stats people are at and they had some stats up there and my hand took the stats, so that’s why they probably called the tech.”

It’s hard to reconcile the two.

Ollie owes nobody an apology (even the reporters he kept waiting in the interview room until well after midnight before he came in for his

presser). But he owes his team more than the explanation he gave.

That lack of accountability is not an example you want to set for your team, particularly when one of your team leaders is in the seat next to you.

Ollie went on from there, talking about the foul call on Jalen Adams that spurred his reaction.

“I think he held him,” Ollie said. “I wanted Jalen to deny him and not get the foul. I just thought it wasn’t a foul that needed to be called at that time.”

Sorry, but a foul is a foul. It doesn’t matter when in the game it is called. It’s something a head coach should know, particularly one who played four years in college, played over a decade in the NBA, was an assistant to a Hall of Fame coach and has led a team of his own for three years.

The technical came right after the Huskies had closed to within their closest margin of the second half, making it a one-possession game with less than three minutes left. UConn never recovered.

Asked if he thought the call was a momentum swing, Ollie said no.

Let’s hope he was still caught up in the emotion of the game and has come to his senses since then.