Even when you are the 9th ranked team in the country and defending National Champs playing unranked University of South Florida in Tampa, don't bother to pack a picnic basket or bring your beach towels when you go on the road in the Big East. The USF Bulls, sparked by their talented freshman point guard, Anthony Collings gave the Huskies all they could handle before succumbing 70-67. With Jim Calhoun serving the first of his Big East three game suspension for recruiting violations it took a dominant 16 point second half performance by Jeremy Lamb to lead a listless Husky squad over USF.
With Calhoun back in Storrs, Associate head Coach George Blaney was at the helm. Blaney was a great head coach in his day at Holy Cross and is as smart as they come, but he just doesn't have Calhoun's intensity and ability to ignite the Huskies. Looking very sluggish, the Huskies dropped behind 12-2 early in the game before waking up to take a 30-28 lead at half time. The USF big men, Augustus Gilchrist and Toarlyn Fitzpatrick were able to drive to the hoop and shoot treys respectively. This brought Husky center Andre Drummond outside and opened the middle for USF drives to the hoop. I thought that Blaney should have put either Oriakhi or Olander on Gilchrist which would have allowed Drummond to patrol the lane; I also think that Calhoun would have made that adjustment. In fairness to Blaney Oriakhi and Olander got in foul trouble, limiting their minutes and necessitating more floor time from Roscoe Smith who continues to be ineffective this year.
In the second half Blaney used his three guard offense more and the Huskies were able to turn up the defensive intensity. Boatright continued to look really good and was the Huskies second leading scorer with 9 points on 4-6 shooting from the floor, intellligent floor play and pesky defense. The story of the game, however, was Jeremy Lamb taking his first giant step towards answering the question of whether he can score the crucial points in a tough Big East contest against a defensive minded team and be the new Husky "Go To Guy". Lamb finished with 23 pts (16 in the second half), was 8-11 from the field, and scored with a variety of "floaters", spin moves and fall back jumpers. OLander, again kicked in intelligent floor play and interior passing and was second on the team with 6 boards. Freshman Forward, Deandre Daniels showed some flashes of things to come particularly on a coast to coast drive in the second half when he turned on the after burners to get to the hoop.
Any Big East road win is a good win. This Saturday at noon the Huskies take on St. Johns at the Civic Center in a game that will televised on SNY.
"You Heard it here First"
Steve
I thought there were some positives in this game. The big one was Lamb, who I thought looked like a pro on a court of college players. His play was so good that it actually rendered the other aspects of the game irrelevant, nearly.
ReplyDeleteThe glaring weakness for UCONN right now is that Drummond has a lot of developing to do and Oriakhi has not developed enough. The bigs aren't playing tough enough on D or assertive and effective enough on O.
Oleander is a revelation, but I predict that UCONN is going to lose some Big East games this season to teams with tougher big men... hopefully this will spur on Drummond's development. But I think Oriakhi might just not be that good.
Astute. Oriakhi is a disappointment- biggest is factor that is becoming clear is that he does not have soft hands and therefore misses far too many shots around the hoop. Soft hands cannot be taught, ie.e. compare to the touch on Olander- that is a big man witn soft hands.
ReplyDeleteWhile there is no such thing a a good loss, as they say "a win is a win". There is no such thing as a "bad win". Unfortunately I didn't see the game since I was in Lewisburg watching Bucknell lose to Loyala in what was a "bad loss", there are such things as those.
ReplyDeleteBut my question is why was Jim in CT rather than sunny FL?
Mike, Calhoun is serving a 3 game suspension for recruiting violations. There were hundreds of illegal calls made by his staff to a top HS recruit. While Calhoun, himself did not make the calls he was held responsible for not enough control over the program. UConn also lost a couple of scholarships. It was a slap on the wrist. Whether he actually was not allowed to accompany the team, I can't say for sure. A little poetic license.
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