UConn’s NCAA formula? Oxygen + Offense

So now the UConn basketball season comes down to O and O. If that reads like something from a periodic table, chemistry is certainly part of it.

UConn had more to gain than to lose on this Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia. And if James Bouknight remained as stupefyingly dominant through the full 40 minutes as he was in the first 11, the next arrow possession would have pointed directly to Indianapolis.

This way to the 2021 NCAA Tournament.

Sure, there’s always the chance that the Huskies could stink up the joint in two games against Georgetown (6-10), a game at Seton Hall (13-8) and a home game against Marquette (10-12). Yet after Bouknight stepping back and draining threes, driving to the basket like he owned the Big East, hitting six of seven shots — the only miss a 25-foot heat check — no one was thinking about UConn laying an egg against the Hoyas.

A win at No. 10 Villanova would have been the ultimate resume builder and a win over Seton Hall followed with a nice run in the Big East Tournament would have been the icing on the resume. Now that the margin of error was erased with 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.