New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Letting one get away
Huskies squander lead, fall to St. John’s
STORRS — For about 28 minutes on Monday afternoon, Adama Sanogo was nice, while Julian Champagnie was on ice.
Sanogo, the freshman forward, spun and powered his way to a career-high 12 points, including a couple of nifty inside hoops early in the second half that kept a charging St. John’s at bay.
Meanwhile, Champagnie, who entered the game as the Big
East’s leading scorer at 20.7 points per game, couldn’t get anything going against the aggressive defense of Isaiah Whaley and Tyrese Martin. He didn’t score his first field goal until about 7 1⁄2 minutes remained in the game.
But with 12 minutes, 46 seconds left to play, Sanogo left the game — quizzically, never to return. He wasn’t injured. Rather, St. John’s went with a small lineup of essentially four guards, and UConn coach Dan Hurley couldn’t find a spot to get Sanogo back in the game.
“The only options to play him would have been to put him on one of the guards,” Hurley reasoned. “It put us in a bad spot there, because I think we would have kept trying to throw the ball inside to him, because he was really the only person that had it going.”
UConn, which had led by as much as 14 in the game’s first eight minutes, led by eight when Sanogo left. About eight minutes later, a Marcus Earlington corner 3-pointer gave the Red Storm their first lead, and they’d never again trail en route to 74-70 victory that was ...
Well, let Captain Brutality describe it.
“Brutal, brutal loss,” said Hurley. “Credit St. John’s. They’re just so relentlessly competitive. They were tougher than us, especially down the stretch of that game. We obviously shot ourselves in the foot quite a bit there.”
UConn (7-2, 4-2 Big East) broke down defensively numerous times down the stretch, allowing St. John’s guard Posh Alexander to drive and shoot his way to 18 points. Meanwhile, the Huskies’ offensive production — with Sanogo sitting on the bench
— stalled.
Still, UConn had a chance to regain the lead, trailing 71-70 with 18.4 seconds left and junior Tyrese Martin stepping to the foul line for a pair of shots. Martin, a 60-percent free-throw shooter, missed both shots. St. John’s guard Rasheem Dunn made one of two from the charity stripe, and UConn pushed the ball down the floor.
Tyler Polley had a wideopen look at a trailing 3pointer but was off the mark. Champagnie hit a pair of free throws with 5.5 seconds left, and the Johnnies’ comeback was complete.
In both of UConn’s losses, a pair of missed free throws down the stretch played huge roles. In a Dec. 20 loss to No. 11 Creighton, it was R.J. Cole’s two missed freebies with 11 seconds left that could have clinched the game. On Monday, it was Martin.
“That’s an individual thing,” said Hurley. “That’s a routine, that’s having the nerves and the confidence to step up and make them. It’s having a routine, it’s breathing, it’s wanting to be there. A lot of that is having the stomach to get up there and to make them.”
Martin wasn’t the only culprit from the foul line. Cole missed two of four free throws within the final 3:12. In fact, the Huskies went 5-for-10 from the charity stripe over the final 8:50.
“I missed two free throws, too. Again,” Cole noted. “Both of my oneand-ones. Next time, we’ve got to prepare ourselves before the game and in practice for the next possession, the next free throws.”
Still, it may have all been moot had Sanogo remained in the game. The 6-foot-9, 240-pound frosh was a bull, finishing 6-for-11 from the floor. His lefty runner five minutes into the latter half put the Huskies up five, and after an Alexander 3-pointer, Sanogo added an elbow jumper to kick off a 6-0 run that forced St. John’s coach Mike Anderson to call a timeout.
Then, it was Sanogo on ice.
“At the end of the game, I think I should have played a little bit more,” the softspoken Mali native said. “But, they were playing four guards, so it was a little bit tough for me to be in at the end of the game.”
“You can see some of the promise there with Adama,” Hurley added. “He probably should have had 16 (points), but you can see the hands, you can see the touch. It just was unfortunate that they played so small and were making 3’s in the second half. So, going zone and keeping him in just wasn’t an option. There was no one for him to guard in man. He’s probably the only good thing that happened.”
Earlington followed Alexander in the scoring column for St. John’s (8-7, 3-6). Alexander finished with 12 points despite shooting just 2-for-9 from the floor.
Paced by Cole’s hot hand, UConn jumped out to a 21-7 start. Cole buried four of five 3-pointers over that span, and after Polley hit a wing jumper with 12:17 left in the half, Anderson called timeout.
The Johnnies quickly responded with a 16-5 run. UConn missed seven of eight shots, including five straight, during that stretch, and led by just three (35-32) at halftime.
Cole led the Huskies with 18 points, Martin had 14 and Sanogo 12.
“Yeah, I played well,” Sanogo noted, “but we lost, so I feel like it doesn’t matter.”
RIM RATTLINGS
▶ James Bouknight, out for about four weeks after undergoing wrist surgery on Tuesday, dribbled the ball robustly during warmups and also fed teammates for jump shots.
▶ UConn wore throwback jerseys for the game. The Huskies’ shirts were 1995 versions, while their shorts were a hybrid of 1999 and 2004.
▶ UConn’s scheduled game for Wednesday at Gampel against Xavier has been postponed due to COVID-19 issues within the Xavier program. At this time, no makeup date has been announced.
It’s the eighth game on UConn’s schedule that has been postponed or canceled this season due to COVIDrelated issues.