There’s no need to rehash the meltdown of last night. You all saw it, and those with at least a few functioning brain cells reached the same conclusions:
It was a hideous loss. UConn got rattled at the first sign of adversity. Despite that, UConn still had a chance to win but couldn’t run anything resembling an offense. And there is no Kemba Walker, Shabazz Napier or Ryan Boatright on this team who can restore sanity when everything is falling apart.
These are facts. These facts say a lot about where UConn is as it reaches peak resume-building season.
It’s been a wildly inconsistent year, which makes it hard to determine exactly how good the Huskies are. We know they have the potential to compete with anyone, in any game. They showed that by coming back against Maryland and Gonzaga. By knocking off Texas in Austin. By controlling the game against Michigan from start to finish.
That’s why, mathematically, not much changed after last night’s 63-58 loss at Temple. UConn is still firmly in the NCAA Tournament (for now) on the heels of a solid, if not strong, resume. The Huskies are also only a game-and-a-half off the pace for the top seed in the AAC Tournament. So despite the major red flags that last night raised, it’s not time to panic.
Not necessarily, at least.
The next few games — at home against Tulsa and SMU, then at Cincinnati — are going to say more about the team than last night’s catastrophe. This is the time when UConn will either respond to the loss, come together and begin playing at a championship level, or it will continue on this path of being good-not-great and likely bow out in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
Kevin Ollie talked a lot in the preseason about not having that one go-to player with the killer instinct who could take over when things got tough. The hope was that that player would have asserted himself by now, but that clearly has not been the case.
If Tulsa goes on a run on Saturday, or if the Cincinnati crowd powers the Bearcats to an early lead next week, who will step up? Sterling Gibbs was the logical pick early on, mainly because of his late-game heroics at Seton Hall, but he has struggled to manage the offense deep into the clock. Daniel Hamilton has shined at times, but has been mercurial in conference play. Amida Brimah might be an option, but he needs to sprout a pair of hands first — or at the very least, completely heal the ones he currently owns. Maybe it’s Rodney Purvis, whose late-game double-dribble was the icing on the cake last night. Or Shonn Miller, arguably the most consistent player on the team.
It’s hard to say, but it has to be someone.
Yet it takes more than one player. Allowing Temple back into the game was a team breakdown. The team, not an individual, got rattled. Ollie said after the game that he needs to figure out how to fix that.
It’s tough, because Ollie can’t coach made layups into Purvis, who has had a problem with the game’s easiest shot all year. Ollie can’t will his team to execute overall. So I don’t know what the solution is there, but he better find it.
According to KenPom, four of UConn’s last seven games are either Tier A or Tier B games. (For those RPI clingers out there, it basically means four of UConn’s last seven games are against quality opponents, adjusted for location). So the Huskies have a chance to pick themselves up off the mat.
But that’s a lot easier said than done.
When i saw Brimah fumble that gimme dunk from Purvis, I knew we were going to drop that game. This team is a collection of (semi) talented individuals. I smell an NIT first round loss.