The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Raring to go
It still hadn’t been officially determined who the UConn men’s basketball team’s first Big East Tournament opponent would be in the minutes following the Huskies’ win at Villanova on Saturday night.
Didn’t matter, as far as Dan Hurley was concerned.
“Any game that we win from here on out is going to be a hard game to win,” the UConn coach noted. “That (first) game is going to be incredibly hard to win. If you survive that, now it’s Marquette or whoever (they play Thursday). And then, obviously, it’s NCAA tournament games. You’ve got to be playing to your identity to the fullest, and you’ve got to play to a high level to advance and win any more games from here.”
Turns out, UConn (24-7, 13-7 Big East) earned the No. 4 seed for the Big East tourney, and it will be old pal Providence, the No. 5 seed, that the Huskies face on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. at Madison Square Garden. Alex Karaban had a suspicion it would be the Friars, even before it became official late Saturday night.
“We’ve got to be superconfident,” Karaban said after scoring 16 points Saturday night that led to a sixth and final Big East Freshman of the Week award. “We’ve just got to keep working. We split with them earlier, so we know they’re a talented team. We’ve just got to stay locked-in for that.”
If the 14th-ranked Huskies aren’t as locked-in now as they’ve been all season, it’s only because they set such a high standard back in November and December. Overcoming a disastrous January where the team’s self-confidence was severely tested, UConn has won five straight and eight of its last nine games.
“We feel really good, just going in with the same mindset, trying to win every game possession by possession, war by war,” said Andre Jackson Jr., who earned Big East weekly honor roll recognition after Just sticking to the script, listening to the coaches all week in preparation for the games, and really just being locked in and making sure we’re all emotionally ready to play the games, and that are skills are ready to be displayed.”
Added Jordan Hawkins: “Our confidence is really high going into the postseason. We’re really confident with what we can do. We can make some noise.”
Hurley has maintained all along that the Huskies
are built for tournament play. He pointed to the team’s dominant performance at the PK Invitational over Thanksgiving weekend, beating three good teams (Oregon, Alabama and Iowa State) by a combined 57 points en route to the title.
“We’ve positioned ourselves well for both tournaments,” the coach said. “This is a loose group. I don’t think it’ll have issues in these tournaments, because I think these guys have gunslingers’ mentalities. Their personality lends itself well to playing well this month.”
And, of course, there’s that omnipresent chip on the shoulder of Hurley and his team. Heck, Hurley pointed out on Saturday that he was upset last week when he heard a TV commentator say that UConn was better than its 22-7 record (at the time). He said he played the comment to his team, and it bothered the players, as well.
“Minus a couple week’s stretch, we’ve played great basketball all year,” Hurley said. “It’s a confident team, and I think it’s a loose team that gets excited to play in tournaments. We won’t be uptight, we’re going to go for it.”
And it’s a team that has survived a terrible January and emerged stronger for it.
“The shovels were out, the dirt was thrown on top of us during that stretch in January,” Hurley added. “We’re going to keep that edge. We don’t want the pats on the back and the flowers now. We’re going to keep that edge. We just can’t wait to get to the Garden and play on Thursday. We know that’s going to be unbelievable this week in New York for the Big East tournament.”