New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
WILLARD, ELIZABETH
Bouknight, Huskies run out of steam in loss to Villanova
Elizabeth “Betty” Mayer Willard, age 90, passed away February 15, 2021. Born in Escanaba, Michigan on September 16, 1930 she was a daughter of the late Walter & Ruth Mayer. Betty was a resident of New Haven most of her life and was a courier for the former Simkins Company. Betty was a 68 year member of Alice Chapter # 76 - Order of the Easter Star. She is survived by her husband Edward T. “Ned” Willard, Jr and her daughter Emily L. Willard of New Haven Betty was predeceased by her sister Margaret Evans and her brother John Mayer.
Friends may attend her Prayer Service on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. at BEECHER & BENNETT FUNERAL HOME, 2300 Whitney Ave, Hamden. Burial will follow in Beaverdale Memorial Park. To send a condolence to her family please see: www.beecherandbennett.com
State lawmakers get plenty of criticism over taxes in Connecticut, but the levy that might hit the hardest is one over which they have little control. It also may have the biggest impact on public policy. Property taxes in Connecticut vary widely from one town to the next. When the mill rate is combined with the assessed value of a home, it makes up the biggest revenue source for local governments, the largest chunk of which is used to fund schools. That means the amount of money available to pay for education in neighboring communities could vary greatly, as well as the rate of taxation.
It’s a regressive, outdated system that has long been due for an overhaul.
Adding to the trouble is that towns and cities have few options when facing a shortfall than to raise property taxes. That means urban centers, which saw manufacturing decline over the second half of the 20th century, were forced to raise tax rates to exorbitant heights, putting the burden on remaining homeowners to make up what was lost from fleeing businesses.
The result is a vicious cycle that makes it harder for cities to attract new investment while giving them less money than they need to pay for public services.
A proposal from House Finance Chair Sean Scanlon, a Guilford Democrat, could change that system. It’s based on Massachusetts’ decades-old law that sets a 2.5 percent limit on annual property tax increases, and it could help ease the burden on our highest-taxed municipalities. The specifics of the proposal, including what level a limit might be set at, have yet to be worked out, but it’s an idea that deserves consideration.
Connecticut residents are highly taxed, but despite what some of the loudest voices might say, the burden falls harder on the lower end of the wealth spectrum than the higher end. Much of that is because of property taxes.
Among the long-term goals, Scanlon says, is to provide incentives for towns and cities to consolidate and regionalize services, putting spending under control. “If we continue down the path of maintaining 169 small kingdoms, we’re going to run out of money,” Scanlon told the CT Mirror.
We hear some variation on that theme every legislative session. It was part of the thinking behind Gov. Ned Lamont’s vision to combine some school services or face penalties, which came up in his first year in office. That proposal, which critics said amounted to merging urban and suburban classrooms, went nowhere.
Connecticut fights hard to maintain local control. Whether it’s housing, schools, zoning or development, each town appears to want to go its own way. There’s an ugly history roiling under the surface that involves finding quaint justifications for keeping people out who don’t look the same, but it’s not only about that. Old habits are sometimes simply hard to break.
Something has to give. Regionalization is key to our future, and limiting property tax increases could be a way to get there. There’s no proposal for a statewide mill rate, but maybe that’s in the offing, too. Whatever form it takes, communities need to find more ways to work together.
Connecticut residents are highly taxed, but despite what some of the loudest voices might say, the burden falls harder on the lower end of the wealth spectrum than the higher end.
In the first 11 minutes of play on Saturday, James Bouknight scored 14 points and ran UConn Nation through the gamut of emotions: thrilled to see him possibly top his 40-point game against Creighton two months earlier, scared witless when he fell to the floor and banged his surgically-repaired left elbow.
Bouknight hit 6 of his first 7 shots, including a pair after returning to the game following his fall to the floor. After that, however, the sophomore All-American candidate hit just one of his final 10 shots — a relatively meaningless 3-pointer with 36 seconds left to play.
Blame the elbow, Villanova’s swarming defense or fatigue. Dan Hurley chose the latter.
“And as he got tired,” the UConn coach noted, “he probably tried to do a little bit too much.”
Bouknight said his elbow was fine, admitted some fatigue, but added: “I mean, I pushed through it, I played through it, so I’m not using that as an excuse.”
Either way, Bouknight was held in check, no other Huskies really stepped up, and 10thranked Villanova snared a 68-60 victory at Philadelphia’s Finneran Pavilion that put a pin to UConn’s NCAA tournament momentum before it even got much traction.
“Tough game, tough loss,” Hurley said. “Credit Villanova. They were just really, really good defensively. They made far less mistakes than we did. They made all the critical plays in the last eight minutes of the game, where it’s a one-possession game. They were able to extend it to 10 and take advantage of some things.”
Make no mistake, UConn (10-6, 7-6 Big East) is still in the
68-60 loss at Finneran Pavilion, it comes down to this for the 2020-21 UConn basketball team:
The oxygen in Bouknight’s lungs and the chemistry of the UConn offense with Bouknight’s return to health since his elbow surgery.
Which one is more important?
“Both,” Hurley said. “So your column, you’re probably going to have slash the headline. We need both.”
The UConn NCAA equation: O/O.
(If the headline writers have done their job, that explains the slash.)
With 8:59 left in the first half, Bouknight made a Euro-step drive and tough finish on Collin Gillespie to cut Nova’s lead to 22-21. He fell to the floor on his elbow, began rubbing his hand and I don’t know what it felt like in Greenwich or New Haven but out near Storrs, it registered a 9.0 on the Worry Scale. James Doran is a nice guy and an accomplished trainer, but he’s the last guy UConn fans want to see on national television these days.
Bouknight said he was fine after a few minutes, yet he also shot 1-for-10 the rest of the game and finished with five turnovers. An extraneous three in the closing seconds was his only hoop. The 6-foot-5 guard was a little banged up, Hurley said, but the real issue was fatigue, conditioning and trying to do too much. Hurley? He says he needs a little patience, but he recognizes that’s one hell of a commodity
with the season running out.
“We’re obviously a completely different team with James returning,” Hurley said. “We don’t play fantasy basketball. You’ve got to develop chemistry and feel again, and a flow and guys have got to learn to play better off each other.
“He’s literally been back five days. He doesn’t have to apologize for us being choppy offensively. We need a little bit of time to get our timing down. The problem for us is we don’t have a lot of time … We don’t have much of a runway to get our act together.”
Villanova obviously is what an NCAA Tournament team looks like. They were tougher than UConn in the second half. They made fewer mistakes. They were more mature. Coach Jay Wright praised Brandon Slater’s defense as they loaded up on the UConn star and escorted him to the land of fatigue.
If Gillespie was on Duke, he’d probably be the most hated guy in the nation, but, man the way that kid posts up, draws fouls (and gets away with some) and stops you from doubling him by passing out to open threes … it’s a tribute to both Wright’s coaching style and Gillespie’s grit. He got R.J. Cole into foul trouble early to take away a second scoring threat and he hit two dagger threes at the end.
Gillespie finished the game with 20 points and his own blood on his uniform. Yet it was the Huskies who really were bloodied. They took 27 (hitting seven) threes and 28 twos and were 3-for-13 on twos not labeled layups
on the ESPN shot chart. In other words, they weren’t nearly enough easy shots.
“They did a really good job of sitting in gaps and held up better on the ball,” Hurley said. “They won those one on one battles when we tried to get downhill.
“The lesson learned for us today is we have to play offense. We have to get the ball moving better. The ball just can’t end up in James’ hands just trying to bail us out. Collectively as a team we’ve got to have a better approach. Obviously we’ve got to get James the ball in a lot of different places.”
Everyone knows Bouknight is UConn’s best player. And anyone who saw him play against Creighton before the injury and ring up Villanova for 14 points in the first quarter of the game also knows he’s one of the best college players in the nation. He’s a surefire first-rounder, headed for a lottery pick in the 2021 NBA Draft.
Yet how long will it take him to put together a full 40 minutes of greatness. For his part, Bouknight initially said fatigue was there but wouldn’t use it as an excuse, changed it to cardio is not a problem and said his body language was bad Saturday because he got frustrated.
And as least as important, can R.J. Cole, Tyrese Martin, Jalen Gaffney and Andre Jackson come together the ball to move efficiently and in concert with The Bouk Show? Can they find Tyler Polley open? Can they continue to keep Adama Sanogo and Isaiah Whaley fed in the post?
Bouknight put it simply. He has to do a better job, too, of finding the open man.
“We can’t stand and watch James,” Hurley said. “We’ve got to continue to get movement. He has to trust his teammates. He’s got to get in game shape. It’s very, very difficult what we asked him to do. James got off to a blistering start. They didn’t change their defensive principles. His conditioning got him. And when he got tired, his decision making got away from him.”
Granted, it was a different team, but the Huskies did rally for five wins down the stretch last season and looked dangerous before COVID ended the season. Will it happen again with a potentially much, much better team? Or is that runway too short?
“We’re confident,” Hurley said. “This is one of the best teams in the country we faced today. The class of our league. Credit them. Their mindset is championship level. We’ve got a chance to put something together here. We don’t have a lot of time. We don’t have much of a safety net.
“We’ve got to get James’ conditioning and his cardio back to a level and we’ve got to put that chemistry together with the group quickly after missing him for six weeks. Against a team of that caliber, that was a tough ask for James to put together a virtuoso performance with one game in 45 days. We’ll be better by the time the Big East rolls around and hopefully we get a chance to play them.”
They’ll need better O/O.