Hurley, Huskies wary of Hoyas
There was a time, many, many years ago, when the arrival of Patrick Ewing and the Georgtown Hoyas to town inspired fear, excitement and a sellout crowd. These days, not so much. The Georgetown team that traipses into Gampel Pavilion on Wednesday (8:30 p.m., CBS Sports Network) to face 20thranked UConn sits dead-last in the Big East standings with an 0-5 record, losers of six games in a row overall. And Ewing, in his fifth season as head coach at his alma mater, could be feeling the heat.
Unable to springboard off the momentum from a surprise run through the Big East tournament last March, Ewing’s future as coach of the program he led to the 1984 national championship before his Hall of Fame NBA career is starting to look hazy, at best.
Still, Dan Hurley must convince his Huskies that Ewing is essentially rolling into town on Tuesday with a roster stacked with reasonable facsimiles of himself, Allen Iverson, Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo. (In fact, the Hoyas’ do have Mutombo’s son, Ryan, though the 7-foot-2 freshman is averaging just 5.2 points and 3.5 rebounds per game).
“You don’t want to be a ‘fat rat,’ and think that you can just show up,” Hurley said Monday afternoon. “Georgetown-UConn means something. In college basketball, those two brands mean a lot. So, we’ve got to show up, when those two brands get together, no matter what the scenario is with the records.”
UConn, which jumped up five spots in this week’s AP Top 25 poll, is 13-4 overall and 4-2 in the Big East.
The Huskies have won three straight against two of the bottom-dwelling teams in the league,
though it hasn’t always been easy. They needed a last-second free throw, on an iffy call, to force overtime at home and eventually beat St. John’s. Last week, UConn beat Butler twice in three days, though got off to a sluggish start and trailed at halftime on Thursday at Hinkle Fieldhouse before riding Tyrese Martin’s 25 second-half points to victory.
“For us, if we get away from our identity, we become a very ordinary, very vulnerable team,” Hurley noted. “If we’re not trying to punk the other team by how hard we play, if we’re not all over the backboard, if we’re not guarding with intensity and intelligence and attacking downhill offensively, we become a very, very ordinary team. A team that could lose to anyone in this league.”
Meanwhile, Georgetown (6-10 overall) led No. 14 Villanova at halftime on Saturday in Washington, D.C. before the Wildcats rallied in the latter half for an 85-74 victory.
UConn’s depth has long been considered its strength this season, and that doesn’t necessarily mean it has a deep bench. The Huskies have three players — Sanogo, Martin and R.J. Cole — averaging over 14 points per game this season.
“We’re a very hard team to beat, because of our depth,” Hurley said. “That doesn’t mean we’re gonna win every game, but we’re either gonna win or lose by a little, because we have more chances that a couple of guys can play well offensively and give you doublefigures.”
In fact, Martin, Sanogo and Cole are all averaging over 15 ppg in Big East games — the only league team to have such a triumvirate.
“We’re hard to prepare for,” Hurley said. “Then you have Andre (Jackson) surging, the shooting off the bench. I was excited the way Isaiah (Whaley) played the other night, got all the way back to his identity.”
UConn was No. 15 in the NET rankings on Monday afternoon. Tuesday night’s game is Quad 4 game for the Huskies, meaning they don’t get much out of a win but a loss would be devastating. UConn has a pair of Quad 2 games coming up afterwards — at DePaul on Saturday, home against
Creighton on Feb. 1 — before a huge showdown at Villanova on Feb. 5.
The Huskies play a whopping nine games in 26 days in February — and it will be 10 if the Providence game canceled on Jan. 15 gets rescheduled next month.
It’ll be a bear of a schedule, but UConn can’t afford to look ahead. For now, the Huskies must focus their efforts on getting a win Tuesday night against Georgetown — a matchup that means a lot to college basketball, no matter what the records or league standings might say.
RIM RATTLINGS
Tuesday will be a Coaches Vs. Cancer game. Hurley said he’ll have his father-inlaw, Ken Sirakides, who died of cancer in his 50’s, in his thoughts.
Hurley, a Cincinnati Bengals fan, had a very specific prediction for this weekend’s AFC Championship Game: Bengals 30, Kansas City 24, with Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes throwing a goal-line interception to send Cincinnati to the Super Bowl.