Well, Husky Nation, you can breathe easy today. UConn won a game. Take a moment. Let that wash over you. I’ll wait.
After dropping two hideous games in Texas to Houston and SMU, and falling out of the national rankings for the first time this season, UConn (12-3, 0-2) fended off a very good Harvard squad (13-2, 0-0) in Gampel Pavilion 61-56.
“It wasn’t a big time offensive game,” Coach Kevin Ollie said. “We just grinded it out.”
This was something of a must-win for UConn, which dropped its first two conference games for the first time in two decades. Lack of effort and intensity were the hallmarks of their losses, so everyone was looking to see what version of this team was going to show up. Fortunately, at least in the second half, it was the team that actually gives a crap.
“We were connected,” Ollie said. “When there was a bad play, we recovered.”
Harvard was up five at the half, and even when UConn went up eight in the second, the Crimson kept coming back. Instead of letting it get the best of them, UConn managed to keep it together and get the win.
Shabazz Napier started to look like Shabazz Napier in the second half, and closed the game out with back-to-back three point shots.
“The first three I made was slightly overshot, and I felt good taking the shot,” said Bazz, who led the team with 18 points, 13 of which he scored in the second half. “[On the second shot] I was fortunate enough to be given a lot of space, and I just tried to knock it down.”
The Husky offense couldn’t seem to find its rhythm in the first half (sound familiar?). The Huskies turned the ball over 11 times in the first half. While they shot 57.9 percent from the field in that half, they only took 19 shots. They pulled down ten rebounds, none of them offensive.
“We were playing like we just had too much on our shoulders,” Napier said.
UConn went colder than the wind chill outside Gampel going nearly seven minutes without a bucket. Harvard went on a 10-0 run in that time to take a 14-10 lead. The Huskies seemed to be playing like they knew they had to win, and it caused them to make mistakes.
“It’s not our characteristic to make that many turnovers,” Ollie said. “I just told the guys at half time to relax.”
Other than the win itself, the best thing about last night’s game was the greatly improved defense.
“We communicated more, we talked more on defense,” Lasan Kromah said. “There was more energy. There was more focus on stopping our man, as a pride thing.”
UConn forced 14 Harvard turnovers and got eight steals. They scored 18 points off of turnovers, and 12 fast break points.
“We’re a defensive team,” Napier said. “When we play defense the right way, we’re going to score on offense. Our offense is predicated on defense.”
UConn’s defense held Harvard to 26.7 percent shooting in the second half, allowing them only 25 points.
“I’ll bet on UConn any day when we have a team shooting that bad,” Ollie said.
Notes:
- The starting rotation got another new look. Defensive specialist Kromah got the start, along with Tyler Olander, Ryan Boatright, DeAndre Daniels and Shabazz Napier. Amida Brimah was originally announced as the starter, but did play 15 minutes on the game before fouling out.
- Harvard was missing leading scorer Wesley Saunders, who contributes nearly 16 points per game. He was bothered by a knee sprain before the game and held out as a precaution.
- Jim Burr was one of the refs, making his usual questionable calls. The most egregious (probably) was the blocking foul call against Tyler Olander when he had basically set up camp in the lane. Unfortunately, that is only one example of many.
- This was the team’s first game on campus in over a month. The last game in Gampel was the Florida contest on December 2. The students are still on break, but the section was fairly well populated.
- Omar Calhoun is in a bad way right now. He played only five minutes and didn’t take a shot. Something is obviously very wrong with him, but it’s not clear what.
- Napier’s knee has been bothering him since the Stanford game, swelling up and just generally causing him to be less Bazz-like. “Certain practices I’ll play through it, and then I’ll take the last 10 minutes off,” he said. “I have this new routine I’m doing to make sure it heals up quicker, because I do play a lot of minutes, and that hinders it from getting healthy.” Bazz was sporting a compression brace for the first time. “It actually felt great today,” he said. “I’ll stick to the routine and hopefully be healthy by Sautrday.”
- Ollie was very positive about the game, and the team overall during the press conference after the game. “They’ve got something special,” he said. “This season is going to be something special if they stick together.”
Next up:
UConn faces Central Florida on Saturday, at 6 p.m. at Gampel Pavilion. You can watch it on ESPNU.
