Huskies coming off first victory at Villanova in 11 years

PHILADELPHIA — Three years ago, following the latest in a string of losses to Villanova, Dan Hurley issued a warning.

“Get us now,” the UConn men’s basketball coach famously said in the postgame press conference, “because it’s coming.”

It’s been slowly building ever since, and on Saturday night at Wells Fargo Center, it arrived. “It” being the Huskies’ first win against Villanova on the road in 11 years.

The 14th-ranked Huskies’ 7159 win over red-hot Villanova was probably not only the Huskies’

best road win of the season, but perhaps the best of Hurley’s five-year tenure at UConn.

“We were kind of lacking a big-time road win,” Hurley noted. “This, for me, was a bigtime road win, to win as comfortably as we did against a team that’s playing as well as anyone in the league.”

Asked if this was his team’s best road win of the season, however, and Hurley balked a bit, pointing to a Dec. 7 win at Florida.

“The Florida win, at the time — if (Collin) Castleton doesn’t get hurt, they’re at least on the bubble. It was a better win at the time, because they had one of the best big guys in the country, and since he hasn’t played they’ve fallen off. That was an underrated win.”

A couple of Hurley’s players, however, rank Saturday night’s win highest.

“Yeah, it’s a tough environment,” Jordan Hawkins said. “Villanova is always a good team. It was a really good win today. Finishes off the season right.”

Added Andre Jackson Jr.: “Definitely. This meant a lot to me, because last year we came in here and didn’t show up, emotionally. We weren’t getting stops, they were getting easy layups ... Being able to get this one showed the character of this team. That meant a lot to me. These times when everything is stacked against you are when it really matters. I was really happy and proud of the guys. We all showed up today.”

With Saturday’s win, UConn finishes its regular season at 24-7, its best record since notching the same record in the 2014 national championship season. The win total of 24 held special meaning for Hawkins.

“For Kobe,” said the sophomore guard, who happens to wear No. 24 in honor of Kobe Bryant.

The Huskies finish 13-7 in the Big East and earned the No. 4 seed for next week’s conference

tournament at Madison Square Garden. They will play border rival Providence on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. in a quarterfinalround game.

Hawkins overcame a slow start and finished with a game-high 24 points, 19 of them in the second half. In a battle against fellow Big East Freshman of the Year candidate Cam Whitmore, Alex Karaban added 16 points and six boards.

Perhaps the defining moment for Karaban’s candidacy against Whitemore, a likely NBA lottery pick, came with about 7 1/2 minutes left. Whitmore missed a foul shot that would have brought Villanova to within eight. Karaban countered by scoring the Huskies’ next two buckets, on a putback and layup, to extend UConn’s lead to 13.

“Alex has a sneaky competitive streak, because he’s he looks like the boy next door,” Hurley noted. “But his work ethic is off the charts, his competitiveness is off the chart. He wants that award. He feels like, from beginning to end, to be a starter from Day One on a team that’s done what we’ve done, and has finished towards the top of the league ... Go ask him. Lie detector, he thinks he should be Rookie of the Year.”

Well, Alex?

“A little bit, just because I knew he was the talk of the town for freshmen going into this season,” Karaban said of Whitmore. “I wanted to prove myself this season that I could compete with him. He’s such a talented player. That was an individual goal I told the coaches before the season that I wanted to do. I wasn’t thinking about it going into this game, just because we were in a road environment and they’re one of the hottest teams in America, so we were more focused on the win. But it was definitely something in the back of my mind during the season.”

Whitmore finished with 14 points, but five of them came over the final 90 seconds, when the outcome had largely been decided.

Jackson Jr. had one of his better offensive performances, as well, scoring 10 points on 4-for-5 shooting, including a pair of 3-pointers, while adding seven rebounds. Adama Sanogo didn’t score in the latter half but finished with nine points and nine boards.

It was a remarkably evenly-matched bout for most of the first half, until the Huskies put some distance between the two with an 11-3 run. Karaban’s jumper at the buzzer, following an inbounds with less than three seconds left in the half, gave UConn a 32-24 lead at the break.

“It was definitely a good little dagger, getting some momentum going into halftime,” Karaban stated. “That was one of the options. Tristen made a great pass, and I knew I had one second left, so I had to shoot it. It went in, so it was great momentum for us.”

Villanova may finish its regular season 16-15 overall, 10-10 in the Big East, but the Wildcats had won six of their last seven after finally getting to full strength about a month ago.

The win also clinched UConn’s first two-game regular-season sweep of Villanova (16-15, 10-10 Big East) since 2002.

The Huskies’ last win over ‘Nova in Philly was Feb. 20, 2012, a 73-70 overtime triumph won on a Shabazz Napier buried a 30-foot trey at the buzzer, causing TV analyst Bill Raftery to shout “Onions!”

True, there were only three other meetings between the two in the City of Brotherly Love since then, and UConn snuck in an NCAA tournament win over the Wildcats in 2014 in Buffalo. Still, 11 years must have felt like 100 for Hurley, who lost his first four meetings against the Wildcats and didn’t break through until last February in Hartford — a game Hurley was ejected from before halftime.

“We said to the guys before the game, it’s gonna be as hard to win in here as it would be to win at Creighton, with how Villanova’s playing,” Hurley said. “We need to be as tough as we were against Creighton, we just needed to play better. And we played better.”

RIM RATTLINGS

• Hassan Diarra warmed up and was in uniform, but didn’t play for a third straight game. He suffered an abdominal strain last week, and it appears Hurley wanted to give him another game’s rest.

Karaban hasn’t shaved since UConn’s Jan. 31 win at DePaul. The beard looks a bit shaggy but is filling in pretty well.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” he remarked. Shave it?

“We have probably the most superstitious coaching staff,” Karaban noted. So ... no.”