Huskies struggle to 14th straight win.
The no. 3 UConn men’s basketball team continued its unbeaten Big East run, but just barely. The Huskies squeaked by the Georgetown Hoyas 64-62 in a sleepy Saturday afternoon affair that once more relied on championship DNA to avoid disaster. UConn improves to 18-1 and 8-0 in the Big East, and have now won 14 straight.
Tarris Reed Jr supplied 15 points and 11 rebounds for his third double double of the season, as well as six stocks (three steals, three blocks). Silas Demary Jr. stuffed the statsheet, per usual, with 12 points, five assists, and four rebounds, as well as several tough plays on both ends of the court. Solo Ball and Braylon Mullins added 10 and 11 points, respectively.
UConn shot an anemic 2/13 from three and were outrebounded 40-34. Vince Iwuchukwu — a former five-star recruit who missed the first six weeks of the season due to an undisclosed medical condition — was a menace inside. The Huskies went several stretches in the late first half and early second half without scoring, and were overall bothered by Georgetown’s physicality. They missed seven free throws, all down the stretch with a chance to put the game away.
In other words, lots of material for Dan Hurley to use for this week off until Villanova.
First Half
It was Tarris Reed Jr 11 and Georgetown 7 to start, with the junior feasting inside going an early 3-3 from the charity stripe. The Huskies forced eight early turnovers, but Karaban and Mullins going 1-6 to start kept the Hoyas around.
The defense was active early and made life miserable for the Fighting Cooleys, but lost a little of its bite when Silas Demary Jr picked up his second foul. That and going a combined 3/13 from is not what fans wanted to see from UConn’s struggling offense. The missed shots —UConn went 1/10 to end the half —bled over into the rest of the team’s energy; Georgetown ended up winning the rebounding and points in the paint battle despite the fast start from Reed. Two separate three-minute scoring draughts will do that to ya.
A Jayden Fort putback dunk put UConn only up four at the break, with the raucous 6,500 crowd going mild.
It was a familiar story. UConn’s overall talent resulted in a comfortable lead, but the team wasn’t able to find the knockout blow, that Evan Miya killshot.
Second Half
The Huskies didn’t come out of the locker room until three minutes on the halftime clock. Whatever Hurley said didn’t work; the Hoyas took a four-point lead out of the break as part of a 12-0 scoring run. Cooley sprinkled in a little 1-2-2 zone pressure that contributed to no UConn baskets for the first five minutes.
With the D.C. crowd riled up and the physicality bordering on chippy, Demary Jr. met Georgetown’s toughness, and the Huskies followed their point guard out of their funk. A strong Karaban drive followed by a Mullins triple helped UConn regain its lead, finally waking up to cap off a 9-0 run.
After a stretch of trading baskets, the Huskies were finally able to string together some stops, but the Hoyas at this point had turned it into a rockfight and UConn would need some help with the lid seemingly affixed on the basket.
A Karaban triple gave UConn a two-possession lead at the under five, but Reed had just picked up his fourth foul, a cheap one away from the basket.
A tough Demary stepback and steal put Karaban on the line to stretch the lead to nine. But the captain missed both and Malik Mack canned a three to put it back to five. A broken possession somehow resulted in a Solo Ball floater but Mack countered with another three. The Hoyas weren’t going away.
Demary Jr. made only the front end of two freebies, and after a quick Georgetown dunk, Ball missed two more. With 13 seconds left and down three, a KJ Lewis three barely grazed the front rim, and even though Mullins missed a free throw, there was not enough time for the Hoyas.
UConn escaped despite Ball and Karaban shooting a combined 4/20 from the field and 1/11 from three. If you want to search for reasons the Huskies escaped, only six turnovers is a positive sign.
I’ve been vocal about how UConn has been doing fine, that a lot of the issues fans are griping about are picking nits. But today was unequivocally not a championship level effort for 40 minutes. A win is a win, and a good old fashioned Big East battle will do the team well in March. Credit to the Huskies for gutting it out when the shots weren’t falling. Georgetown also did not play like a team that lost to DePaul a week ago, and Iwuchukwu inside changes their identity for the latter half of the Big East slate.
Maybe the close win looks better with time.
The Huskies won today due to their championship DNA. Demary Jr. and Reed rose to the challenge with resiliency, and the Hoyas —despite a very impressive effort — ultimately lacked the firepower to pull off the upset. As a collective unit, there’s a lot for the staff to dissect until Villanova comes to town next Saturday.
Category: General Sports
