UConn managed to hold off a plucky Houston team at Hofheinz Pavilion on Sunday afternoon to salvage the latter half of a two-game road trip. The 69-57 victory was hard-earned, improving the Huskies’ record to 12-5 and pushing them up to fifth place in the AAC at 3-2 (tied with Houston over whom they now own the tiebreaker, obviously).
In a familiar scene, the Huskies were trailing at the half on Sunday. Despite holding Houston to 33.3 percent shooting, 12 turnovers on offense led to seven Cougar points. Allowing five offensive rebounds resulted in seven second-chance points. All while the Huskies were without Rodney Purvis who was benched in favor of Jalen Adams to start the game and played only five first half minutes after picking up two fouls.
Matters got worse once the second half started. Houston built a 49-41 lead with 13 minutes remaining and it appeared UConn would let another critical conference game slip away.
Yet over the next four and a half minutes, the Huskies would reel off a 10-0 run that earned them the lead. A few minutes later consecutive Sterling Gibbs three-pointers put them up five and they wouldn’t trail again.
Gibbs was again UConn’s best player. He scored an even 20 points, his third 20-plus point performance in a row. He hit four three pointers and all four of his free throw attempts. Gibbs’ performance was crucial since Purvis didn’t bring much in the second half either. Purvis played 15 minutes but missed all four of his shot attempts.
Fortunately, Jalen Adams picked up the slack. While sometimes out of control (five turnovers), Adams excelled at getting inside the Houston defense, scoring 13 points on 6-8 shooting without attempting a three-pointer — which is probably a good thing since it’s now been 46 days since he last made one. This team has had trouble finding guys to step up when the go-to players are struggling on offense. On Sunday, Adams was up to the task.
For Purvis, it was his second poor performance in a row after what had been a very consistent start to the season. His 20 minutes were the fewest he’s played in a game since the infamous Yale calamity in December of 2014. Struggling with his jump shot, Purvis has missed all ten of his three-point attempts during the road trip, dipping his season percentage from 47.4 percent last week to 42 percent now.
On the other side of the coin, Daniel Hamilton appeared to finally recover from a brutal three game slump. He scored 14 points on 4-13 shooting while, again, leading the team in rebounding with nine.
Speaking of rebounding, the Huskies did that quite well on Sunday. It was the first conference game of the season in which they’ve out-rebounded their opponent (41-33 against Houston).
“They were getting all the rebounds,” said coach Kevin Ollie. “I’m going to throw them a pizza party.“
Knowing Ollie, the pizza may be metaphorical.
In other good news, Shonn Miller recovered after a foul-plagued first half to dominate Houston in the paint in the second, scoring 12 points after intermission. Phil Nolan earned the start in place of Kentan Facey and responded with a career-high (!) eight rebounds. Nolan also recorded a team-high (tied) three assists, including one hilariously spectacular pass to Jalen Adams for a spinning first half layup.
The most promising sign on Sunday was that UConn was able to lean on their offense to close out the game. The Huskies have been getting by at the end of close contests with their phenomenal free throw shooting. On Sunday, they earned their victory from the floor, making four of their final six shots with under four minutes to play. In their previous five games, the team was 7-27 (25.9 percent) in the final four minutes.
Despite the heartening win, this UConn team still seems to lack an identity, especially with Amida Brimah continuing his recovery from injury. They showcase immense talent at times — especially the quartet of Gibbs, Purvis, Hamilton and Miller — but have yet to achieve the type of results you’d expect from such a dynamic roster. Even in a victory, this team leaves you wanting more. Now into the second half of their regular season, the Huskies need to build on victories — not just with momentum — but in how they play together, how Ollie manages minutes and how they respond when their star players see their shots stop falling.
Their next chance to improve will come on Tuesday night as Tulane visits Hartford. Tip is at 7 pm and the game is not on television, it is on CBS Sports Network.
So great to see 10 Toes in again, with everyone, including Ollie off the bench and engaged. You could feel the tenacity through the TV as a combination of fierce defense, and a will to win allowed them to overcome trouble shooting. It seems clear that if they play with that type of sheer determination,, there’s not many teams they will lose to, even when their shots don’t fall. And when their shots do you fall, they got to continue that tenancity, and they might just make some noise after all. Go Uconn!
Zone, bench rod(makes nobody better), stop in toto amida + sam jr lab samples, reduce underutilization of miller, take best hope with adams at point of attack; now maybe cut away a few layers of cronyism regarding assistants & favors to friend sam sr to open up schollie for a real player & take walk on schollie to use for a contributor and voila; current coach must be staying at a holidaze in-Bottle It.