The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Jersey Boys lead Huskies to huge win at Seton Hall
NEWARK, N.J. — In 2001, Dan Hurley took over the head coaching reins at St. Benedict’s Prep, a struggling program in a dilapidated neighborhood. He turned it around into one of the powerhouse programs in the nation.
Sound familiar? Twenty years later, and just a few blocks down the road, Hurley added to his legend as a program-builder on Wednesday night at the Prudential Center. Behind Isaiah Whaley’s doubledouble and defensive dominance, and strong efforts by a pair of Jersey Boys, UConn rolled to a 69-58 win over Seton Hall that clinched a third-place finish in the Huskies’ first year back in the Big East and Hurley’s third year at the Huskies’ helm.
“Looking where we were that March/April (2018) when we came in, being a 180 KenPom, the different programs we were sandwiched between, and now, in Year 3, going up in weight and having a chance to go 11-6 if we win on Saturday, and having us back in the NCAA tournament,” Hurley marveled, “we recruited the right guys, we’ve developed them, we’ve built a culture, the players we’ve inherited helped us build a culture. This is what Dave (Benedict, UConn’s athletic director) hired me to do.”
UConn (13-6, 10-6 Big East) also all but clinched its first NCAA tournament berth since 2016 with Wednesday’s Quad 1 win. Hurley wasn’t as talkative on that subject.
“The bubble doesn’t both
er me,” he said. “I don’t think we’re still on the bubble. I don’t even want to talk about that.”
The Huskies close out their regular season at home on Saturday against an improved Georgetown team. They’ll begin Big East tournament action on March 11 at 9 p.m. at Madison Square Garden.
“We’re not satisfied, we’re still hungry,” Whaley said. “We want more. We’re gonna celebrate this, but we’re gonna get right back tow work (Thursday).”
Whaley finished with 17 points (one shy of his career high) and 10 rebounds. More impressively, he blocked and disrupted Seton Hall leading scorer Sandro “Mamu” Mamukelashvili all night. Mamu finished with 20 points, but shot just 7-for-20 from the floor. After shooting 12 free throws in Seton Hall’s win at UConn last month, Mamu got to the line just three times on Wednesday.
“That was probably one our main focuses, to make sure we didn’t foul him,” Whaley said. “He shot too many free throws the last time we played them, we gave him a lot of easy shots. We know he’s gonna make shots, but it was all about making things as difficult as we possibly could.”
Added Hurley: “Isaiah’s obviously MVP of the game, just making things so hard for Mamu, making him earn those numbers.”
Adama Sanogo, the Mali native who attended nearby Patrick School and had all but committed to Seton Hall in April before being swiped away by Hurley & Co., notched career highs with 16 points and nine rebounds. R.J. Cole, who grew up in nearby Linden, added 14 points — nine in the second half.
The trio of Whaley, Sanogo and Cole did enough to overcome a rather quiet 16 points by leading scorer James Bouknight (on 4-for-13 shooting). In fact, after Bouknight went to the bench with his third foul just over three minutes into the second half, the Huskies extended their lead from five points to nine before he returned about seven minutes later.
Seton Hall, meanwhile, fell to 13-11 overall, 10-8 in the Big East and, in all likelihood, off the NCAA tournament bubble for now.
Whaley’s putback bank with four seconds left in the half gave UConn a 27-26 lead at the break — its first lead of the game — despite shooting just 38-percent from the floor. The Hall jumped out to a 7-0 start and led 15-6 a little over six minutes into the game, during which the Huskies made just one shot and turned the ball over four times.
“They jumped us,” Hurley said. “We knew they were gonna come out fast in a game that was critical for them.”