New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
No more mulligans
Huskies need to improve against good Hartford team
Dan Hurley gave his team a mulligan for its subpar defensive effort in its season-opener on Wednesday.
Another such effort on Friday night could be the basketball equivalent of a two-stroke penalty. Or worse.
A day removed from a 27-point win over Central Connecticut State, UConn hosts Hartford on Friday (8 p.m., CBS Sports Network)
at Gampel Pavilion.
Hartford is no CCSU. The Hawks were a game away from an NCAA tournament berth last season, slated to face Vermont in the America East championship game before COVID-19 intervened. They’ve got four of their top five scorers back, including former Marquette guard Traci Carter, whom coach John Gallagher calls “the best defensive guard I’ve ever coached.”
Hartford’s got size (four players 6-foot-9 or taller), goes about 10-deep and is phyiscal. This is no pushover. While CCSU, a threewin team last season, was able to trade leads with UConn for most of the first half on Wednesday, trailed by just seven at halftime and was never really put away until the final 10 minutes of play, Hartford promises to present much more of a challenge.
“I think they will be able, for 40 minutes, to sustain the type of play that Central was able to take to the court,” Hurley said. “Hartford is a better team. They’ll be able to sustain it for a full game. That’s a scary game on Friday.”
Gallagher is a little more restrained in his expectations.
“We may not be ready for UConn Friday night,” the 11th-year Hartford coach said. “But come March or April, whenever the season is coming on its winding end, we’ll be a different team. We’ll have a chance to be really good at the end of the season.”
Hartford’s season-opener on Wednesday was canceled after its opponent, Merrimack, had a COVIDrelated issue affect the team. The bout with UConn likely wouldn’t have happened in a normal season, but this is no normal season. Since COVID-19 first shut everything down in March,
Gallagher and UConn assistant Tom Moore have had multiple conversations about playing the game. It was on, then off, then on, then off again. When a scheduled UConn game against another opponent got canceled, HartfordUConn was back on again.
For Hurley, the fear really stems from his own team, not the Hawks. The third-year Husky coach was infuriated with his team’s defensive effort — or lack thereof — on Wednesday. UConn allowed the Blue Devils to shoot 54 percent for the first half, 50 percent for the game and 47 percent from 3-point land.
And with just one Thanksgiving Day of practice to make adjustments ...
“The way you fix things is on the practice floor,” Hurley said. “You can’t draw it up on a clipboard during a game and fix things. It’s repetition. You build tough-minded teams, aggressive, physical tough teams, by having tough, physical, competitive practices.”
Hurley gave his team the above-mentioned “mulligan” because UConn was only able to get in about five practices after returning from a COVID-necessitated, two-week shutdown that began Nov. 5.
“But come Friday night,” he said, “I don’t want to hear any more (bleep). They got their mulligan.”
Fore!