The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Gilbert returns to face Memphis
MEMPHIS — There’s never a good time to for a college basketball team to be short-handed, but this may be the worst time for it to happen to UConn.
The Huskies face Memphis on Saturday in a nationally-televised game at FedExForum (1 p.m., CBS). UConn (11-9, 2-5 AAC) is coming off its first win in three weeks a bit shorthanded, while Memphis (15-5, 4-3) has lost four of its last six and dropped out of the AP Top 25 for the first time all season.
It kicks off a most grueling February schedule for UConn. The shortest month features the most games for the Huskies — nine contests in 29 days, five of them on the road. After the rare (for UConn) Saturday game, the Huskies travel to Tulsa on Thursday and don’t have four-day respite between games until March.
Making it even tougher for UConn is its depleted roster. The Huskies had just seven scholarship players available in Wednesday night’s win over lowly Temple. They will be back to eight on Saturday, however.
Alterique Gilbert, who was not at Sunday’s game due to personal reasons, has made the trip and is “in the mix,” according to coach Dan Hurley.
“He’s doing well,” Hurley said of the fourth-year point guard. “I think Al’s focus here is just to play with a lot of joy and enthusiasm, and help the team win, do his part to give us a lift, gets us to an eighth body out there. Hopefully, he can give us a good contribution.”
The Huskies will still be short-handed. Sophomore forward Sid Wilson, who injured his knee in an overtime loss on Sunday to Tulsa and missed the Temple game, will not play on Saturday.
Junior forward Tyler Polley is out for the season with a torn ACL. The Huskies will need as much
depth as possible over the next month.
“January was rough ... We’re excited about February,” Hurley said. I think we’ve got a team that’s excited to take the floor. You get into the rhythm of it, the two games a week, the two-day prep. That little bye week would have been nice, getting that full five days, for a guy like Akok (Akok), who we’ve got to be careful monitoring in practice. Particularly with him, he’s played so many minutes, he’s been the anchor of our defense. You worry about guys getting worn down, especially him. Mostly him.”
Bolstered by the consensus No. 1 recruiting class in the nation, Memphis was ranked No. 14 in the preseason AP Top 25 and was predicted to be co-champion of the AAC, along with Houston, in the league’s preseason coaches’ poll.
But things haven’t gone smoothly for Penny Hardaway & Co. Just a week into the season, No. 1 national recruit and likely NBA lottery pick James Wiseman was ruled ineligible, since Hardaway had paid for his move to Memphis a couple of years earlier. The NCAA ultimately ruled Wiseman would be allowed to return after sitting out 11 games, but on Dec. 20, the 7-footer elected to leave the school to prepare for the NBA draft.
Memphis has had ups and downs since then, the low point coming on Jan. 22 in a 40-point loss at Tulsa. Three days later, the Tigers lost at home to SMU
and dropped out of the national rankings for the first time this season.
But the Tigers, who won at UCF on Wednesday night, are still deep and talented.
“They’re super-athletic,
just like we are,” freshman guard James Bouknight said. “They’re gonna play hard, we’re gonna play hard. We’ve just got to play harder than them. That’s really what it comes down to.”
“They play such an athletic style,” added Hurley, “so if we don’t have fresh legs (Saturday), we could have a rough one.”