The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Huskies picked to finish fifth in AAC preseason poll
Larrier: ‘It’s just fuel to the fire’
PHILADELPHIA — In the first four years of the American Athletic Conference, UConn was picked to finish second, first, second and second in the preseason coaches’ poll.
The Huskies wound up finishing fourth, sixth, sixth and sixth.
This year, the league’s coaches have picked UConn to finish in fifth place. The Huskies hope to flip the script and, for the first time, finish better than their preseason ranking.
“It’s kinda low,” junior forward Terry Larrier said of UConn’s fifth-place prediction at Monday’s AAC media day. “We definitely believe that we’re better than that. But it’s just fuel to the fire. That’s more motivation to us to come out and prove it this year, that’s all.”
Perhaps the lower expectations will be a good thing for a Huskies team that is talented but has essentially just two players returning from last season. Jalen Adams, the junior guard selected as a preseason first-team all-league pick, and sophomore guard Christian Vital are the only players who played more than four games a year ago. Larrier and Alterique Gilbert (who, in a rare occurrence, has been named the AAC Preseason Rookie of the Year for a second straight season, since he’s officially a redshirt freshman) suffered season-ending injuries in November. Mamadou Diarra sat out the entire season with chronic knee issues.
Everyone else — nine players in all, either transfers or freshmen — are new to the program.
“I’m teaching guys how to jump to the ball right now,” sixth-year head coach Kevin Ollie said. “I’m really not concerned about who’s fifth or sixth or first. I’m trying to teach these guys the basics of basketball.”
Still, there’s plenty of
talent here. Adams led the AAC in assists and the Huskies in scoring last season at 14.4 points per game. Gilbert was a McDonald’s All American in high school, and Larrier may the most talented of the three.
Indeed, UConn’s mix of great talent and great inexperience had Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin labeling them the league’s “wild card” this season — one that could go either way in the standings.
“If that’s what he called us, that’s what he called us,” Ollie said. “I think we’re a team in progress. We’re trying to get better every day. Wild card, champion, worst team, best team — it really doesn’t matter to me. It’s about what we do every day at practice.”
While the Huskies may be flying under the radar a bit to start the season, the league may be as good as it’s been. Wichita State, which returns 12 players from a 31-5 team, joins the league after dominating the Missouri Valley Conference in recent years. The Shockers, who are one of just five teams to have won at least one NCAA tournament game the past five seasons, instantly upgrade the league.
“It’s great for our league, it’s great for us,” Ollie said. “We don’t have to go searching for other big games out of conference. It’s just a great addition, another great RPI game for our conference.”
Yet Wichita State wasn’t even tabbed as the best team in the league by the coaches. That honor belongs to Cincinnati, which brings back four of its top five scorers from a 30-win team. The Bearcats earned seven first-place votes to Wichita State’s five and edged the Shockers by a single point (116-115) to earn top billing.
That didn’t stop eternally chippy Cronin from complaining Monday. The Bearcats didn’t get a single player on the first-team allleague team. Rather, they got three players — Kyle Washington, Gary Clark and Jacob Evans — on the second team.
“I must be a hell of a coach,” Cronin said, sarcastically. “That’s unfortunate. It’s really comical. I have three guys that probably could be first-team allleague. Maybe we’ve got too many guys and it’s splitting up the votes, I don’t know.”
SMU’s Shake Milton was named Preseason Player of the Year. It could have easily gone to Wichita State’s Landry Shamet, who is currently sidelined with a stress fracture in his right foot but is expected to return before league play starts.
The Huskies open AAC play hosting Wichita State on Dec. 30 at the XL Center in a game that will be nationally televised on CBS.
The league’s preseason first-team all-league selections were Adams, Milton, Shamet, Houston’s Rob Gray and UCF’s B.J. Taylor. All five players are guards, highlighting a trend in college basketball in general and the American in particular.
“The whole league and all of basketball is going away from the big guys, playing four around one and maybe having a big guy in the middle,” Ollie said. “That’s just how the game is going. We have to adjust. That’s kind of how I want to play. That’s how we won national championships, with a multi-dimensional 4-man, who can play different positions and be out on the perimeter and be on the inside.”
A national championship might be a pipe dream this season for UConn. But fifth place? That’s providing the Huskies with some incentive.
“It’s definitely a chip on our shoulder,” Gilbert said. “We feel that we’re a lot better than that. But it’s preseason. It’s just the beginning for us.”