Bouknight feels he forced too much
Having only recently returned to basketball after a 42-day break, James Bouknight was increasingly fatigued and ineffective while trying to slice through the jaws of a claustrophobic Villanova defense in the second half of UConn’s 68-60 loss Saturday afternoon at Finneran Pavilion.
“I felt I forced way too much,” Bouknight said after leading the Huskies with 21 points, 14 in the first half and seven in the second, over a team-high 36 minutes. “I think I was trying too hard to get into the paint and score instead of find the open man. So that's one of the main things I need to work on.”
A one-man-show approach held up for a half — a brilliant first half by Bouknight, in his second game back from elbow surgery — but the Huskies and their best player were ultimately worn down by a tireless and composed team.
The No. 10 Wildcats swarmed Bouknight, who found two or three defenders at every turn. He was crafty and energetic enough to thrive early, but ultimately out of breath and answers.
“Yeah, definitely, but that's not an excuse,” Bouknight said when asked about being tired. “I pushed through it. I played through it. I'm not going to use it as an excuse.”
Bouknight was 1-for-8 from the field in the second half, when he did manage seven of his 10 rebounds. The Huskies kept looking to him, and the situation did not improve.
Bouknight blamed himself for failing to find players who might have been better options on certain possessions. His teammates didn’t assert themselves in the way of being true offensive helpers, either. And coach Dan Hurley probably could have called for Bouknight and others operate in different ways.
“They were switching a lot [and] they were obviously really loaded up to James,” Hurley said. “I think the lesson learned for us is that we have to play offense. We’ve got to get the ball moving better. The ball can't just 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, but I don't think the ball moved quite anywhere near as well as we needed.”
UConn (10-6, 7-6 Big East) is staring at just four remaining regular season games from atop the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Bouknight, averaging 20.1 points in his eight games, probably had every NBA scout marking him as a lottery pick with his play in the first half on Saturday, if they hadn’t already. He made six of his first seven shots, including a couple 3-pointers, to help turn the game into a tense, possession-by-possession fight.
When he scored through a collision on the break to make it 12-12, he fell to the court on his surgically repaired left elbow. He went to the bench on the next possession for a break that lasted just 2:12.
“It felt fine,” Bouknight said. “So I went back in. I wasn't worried at all.”
In the second half, Bouknight came up limp — a sore calf, it appeared — after sprinting back on defense.
“He got a little nicked up,” Hurley said. “They were pretty physical with him. He's a hard-playing guy. He’s just bruised up, banged up. I think more of his issue was fatigue, conditioning. As he got tired, just probably tried to do a little bit too much.”
UConn went 7:05 without a field goal at one point. A one-point deficit with 10:46 remaining grew to seven with 3:41 to go. Bouknight missed 10 of his final 11 shots.
“They did a good job of loading up on whoever had the ball and trying to make plays,” Bouknight said. “They played very good team defense and we were just a step slow offensively. Coach emphasized that we couldn’t make that many mistakes, and we made too many mistakes and they executed on the mistakes we made.”