Huskies need to get creative without Bouknight
For most of the game, they were plenty tough enough.
They just weren’t good enough.
And nobody missed so many bunnies since Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes.
But that is one Saturday afternoon in Omaha, Nebraska. That is one 72-64 loss to No. 11 Creighton in the first game since Nov. 27, 2015, when the No. 23 UConn Huskies went against another ranked team (No. 10 Gonzaga).
UConn lost without James Bouknight. Without Akok Akok. Without Andre Jackson.
So what now?
What can’t happen is for the Huskies to tuck in their offensive tails, flatten their shooting ears and start avoiding eye contact until Bouknight returns.
What can’t happen is for them to try hard, get shots, miss them, get more shots with elbow grease on the offensive boards, miss them too, get frustrated and eventually lose focus on the other end. That happened as Creighton shot 58 percent in the second half after UConn tortured the Bluejays 11-1 on the offensive boards in the first half yet only shot 29 percent.
What can’t happen is to get hot one game and then execute far too poorly on offense the following two and expect to get the Big Bouknight Free Pass.
For if that happens, they are going to lose to a lot more teams in the Big East than Creighton. Lose more games than they should and, yes, slow the building process that Dan Hurley is pushing, pushing, pushing back to national prominence.
What must happen over the next few weeks is for Hurley, Captain Brutality, to also be Captain Creativity to find different ways to squeeze enough points from his offense. His players, of course, also cannot miss so many makeable shots, especially a number of agonizing layups, so the Huskies can at least pull out two of the next three games against Butler, Villanova and St. John’s. Don’t allow the belief in the process to crack. And get confidence the ball will go in the hoop. He has to coach them up, too.
The Huskies already beat Butler without Bouknight. They insist they blew the game against St. John’s because they weren’t tough enough and Hurley said that cannot happen again. On paper, let’s give a W to Villanova, although no competitive team would take an L before taking the floor.
The larger point is that for the next eight days after this game, UConn — 7-3 after its first back-to-back losses of the season — has to find immediate ways to win without Bouknight. After Butler comes Xavier, Seton Hall and two with Providence, the kind of games that can go either way.
Forget projections about the NCAA for now. Drill down on the next couple of weeks.
It’s hard to know exactly when Bouknight will return. At first, Hurley said he suffered a hyperextended elbow when Koby McEwen of Marquette fell on him Jan. 5. In the ensuing days he said expected Bouknight to be back soon, only to announce post-surgery that Bouknight had been operated on Jan. 12 for elbow spurs. Now I’m no medical doctor — I only stayed at a Holiday Inn Express — but I do have shoulder spurs and spurs are bony projections that grow eventually to take the place of wornout cushioning. So were spurs found and removed after Bouknight’s fall? Or did a piece break after the fall? Or did Hurley mean bone chips? Don’t know.
At any rate, UConn has put his return at four to six weeks from his Jan. 12 elbow surgery. That’s somewhere between Feb. 9 and Feb. 23 and missing four to
eight more games on top of the four (UConn’s 2-2) he already missed.
“You just can’t let these losses define our season,” Cole said. “I feel like if we come out next game, at practice, everybody, we stay together and continue to display our toughness, I think we can get through it … Keep working, communicating, doing the little things, and we’ll be able to get over the hump and when James comes back, we’ll just keep pushing forward.”
Yes, Hurley bemoaned the missed layups, pointblank shots, put-backs. Isaiah Whaley missed a few that appeared impossible to miss. And, yes, Hurley bemoaned the resulting frustration and loss of second-half defensive integrity — like Tyler Polley dozing off on 3-point sharpshooter Mitch Ballock.
“In the end we have no chance of winning a game that got outside 60 today,” Hurley said. “No chance. I don’t know how many games (the Huskies can win) that go no north of 60, based on what we’re putting on the court right now. So we’ve got to do a better job, obviously, on the defensive end, for a full 40 minutes.”
Cole, who finished with 14 points, brought the Huskies back at the end of the first half. Freshman Adama Sanogo, whom Hurley sat in the second half when St. John’s went to a small lineup over the final 13 minutes, had 13 points and clearly is developing in a strong post player. Hurley didn’t get nearly enough from anyone else.
“Adama is a special player,” Hurley said. “You feel like you’ve got a guy at that position that will be able to actually compete for a Big East championship because of his makeup. He’s a throwback. You come in the morning and he’s in the weight room. You walk through the facility, he’s working post moves. He sprints to study hall. He’s the hardest-playing, toughest guy in the practice. We’re going to going to continue to develop him and he’ll be a dominant player moving forward.
“But if you had said to me before the start of the season, Adama is going to be your most reliable offensive player, I’d be saying we have some issues.”
Stop me when I name a player who from Game 1 to Game 10 has consistently exceeded expectations … Cole, Tyrese Martin, Whaley, Josh Carlton, Polley, Brendan Adams, Jalen Gaffney … A few have come close to meeting them. Polley, who went nuts shooting 3s to win Big East player of
the week honors, has disappeared entirely the last two games.
From the start, Hurley said the real strength of its team is its depth. Yes, Bouknight is one heck of a talent. His 40 in the first game against Creighton showed how high the bar on him can be pushed. But this was never a one-man team, not even close. And if the thinking becomes that it is a oneman team — forget it.
Certainly Akok’s fullhealth, pogo-stick energy is what would help turn UConn from a No. 23ranked team in January to a No. 15 team in March. Yet the Huskies also got off to a 7-1 start without him and he clearly isn’t ready in Hurley’s mind to play meaningful minutes. The word Saturday was he missed the game with a bruised shin suffered in practice. Afterward, for the second postgame in a row, Hurley sounded much more focused on the playing limitations in his return from Achilles surgery. Akok, who wants to play, had his first game Jan. 5 at Marquette, but has only averaged 3.8 minutes a game.
“His prognosis is he is recovering really, really well,” Hurley said. “He got nicked up. But in general, as we’ve seen in the last couples of games, we’ve got to be thinking big-picture with him, because I don’t think you’re really going to see that guy being himself until much further down the road into next season. We’ll try to see if we can get him back to where he can give us something this year. I think it’s a tough situation right now.”
That doesn’t sound great for this year, does it?
“We’re dying to get Dre healthy,” Hurley said. “We think we’d have him going at this point like Adama. It’s really unfortunate with the wrist thing we’re not getting the same opportunity to develop Andre. Hopefully within the next week. That’s the guy we really want to get back and healthy right now.”
I’d suggest folks don’t go crazy about Jackson’s immediate return. He is going to be a really good one, undoubtedly an athletic offensive player. His upward trajectory was slowed by preseason knee problems and the Huskies’ COVID pauses, yet before he fractured his wrist he hadn’t played very well in games.
The next few weeks, Captain Creativity is going to have to earn his money.