With more help, less minutes, Huskies’ Sanogo is feeling fresh for postseason
What Adama Sanogo does in the low post for the UConn men's basketball team takes a lot of work.
Every lightning-quick spin move to the basket is essentially the footwork of a furious tap-dance routine. The longest arms of the Big East collapse down upon him. The conference's toughest and thickest players loom and then swarm.
It's rough down there. It's no wonder why Sanogo came down the stretch of last season a little beat up and about out of gas. He was one of the best post players in America throughout 2021-22, but a shell of himself in the postseason as the Huskies were bounced from the NCAA Tournament in the first round.
“Fresher; he's definitely fresher,” coach Dan Hurley said recently of Sanogo, now a junior, again dominant, this time seemingly in better position to remain so. “I just think he's figured out how to be effective and productive, offensively, without just getting low-post catches. He's much improved in the ball screen game, he's much improved on the offensive glass, and I think he's improved a lot as a passer, which I think has opened up things for him and for us. And the shooting around him has certainly helped.”
It was hard to nit-pick Sanogo's performances in March last season, considering all he had done to pull UConn that far. But he had trouble finishing near the rim in the Big East Tournament, going 2for-11 from the field in a quarterfinal victory over Seton Hall and 6-for-15 in a semifinal loss to Villanova.
Six days later in Buffalo, early in UConn's first-round NCAA Tournament loss to New Mexico State, Sanogo stole the ball and was alone on a breakaway. He missed a dunk while chased down from behind for a block by Johnny McCants, a play that underscored his fatigue.
Sanogo was 4-for-9 from the field and had 10 points and 8 rebounds as UConn's season came to an abrupt end. He played 35 minutes in that game. He had played 33-plus in all but one of UConn's final five
regular season games last year — then 35 against Seton Hall and 32 against Villanova.
For the 2021-22 season, Sanogo played 847 minutes in 29 games, a 29.2 average.
This season, he entered the Big East Tournament having played 823 minutes in 31 games, a 26.5 average. That 2.7 minutes makes a difference and Sanogo's life has gotten easier with the presence of freshman Donovan Clingan.
Clingan entered the Big East Tournament averaging 7.3 points, 5.8 rebounds and 13.3 minutes.
“I have somebody who can back me up a little bit,” Sanogo said. “Last year, I didn't have that. Having Donovan to back me up is going to give me some time to rest. I'm feeling good. I feel good to go for the upcoming month. My body feels good.”
Said Hurley: “Having Donovan has helped him be much more efficient because he plays against a really tough guy every day.”
UConn brings more options and weapons into the NCAA Tournament than it
has in recent years, what with the way Jordan Hawkins leads a group of guards capable of taking over a game, the way Andre Jackson and disrupt and defend as well as anyone, the way the Huskies' bench production is on the rise at the right time.
At the heart of it all, literally and symbolically, is Sanogo, named an All-Big East First-Team player for the second year in a row. In the regular season, he averaged 16.9 points, leading the Big East in overall scoring average, and 7.2 rebounds. He scored 20-plus points nine times in the regular season, with five double-doubles.
UConn won its final five games of the regular season and Sanogo didn't play more than 27 minutes in any of them. The Huskies will find out their NCAA Tournament destination and opponent on Sunday, a moment spent preparing for by the way work is conducting in February leading into March.
“We shorten things up,” Hurley said of practices. “You're looking at past years, practice plans. Just shaving down a lot of the live. You're probably at the beginning of the year, November, the day before a game, you may do an hour of live play. This time of year you're maybe doing a half an hour of live play and more dummy or defense on air, fundamentals, a lot more shooting.”
Sanogo is the seventh UConn player twice named to the Big East's first team, joining Corny Thompson, Donyell Marshall, Ray Allen, Richard Hamilton, Emeka Okafor and Shabazz Napier. He entered the Big East tournament shooting a career-high 58.6 percent from the field in a season he has stretched his game to the perimeter.
Sanogo entered the season 0-for-1 on 3pointers in his career. He was 17-for-47 this season before the Big East Tournament, 36.2 percent.
“He's bought into moving and he's bought into the ball screen game, setting great pins and staggers for our shooters and then releasing to the rim,” Hurley said. “He's just gotten better as a screener. I think he's gotten better at tracking and tracing the ball on the offensive glass. He's such a good 1-on-1 low-post player that I think he got seduced into wanting the ball in the post — give it to me, I got this. And I just think he's evolved as a better offensive player because we're getting him the ball not just on the low post. He's rolling, he's doing different things. The passing certainly has helped. We have shooting and obviously Andre is getting better as a cutter.”
UConn, it could be argued, has the best center play in America, with Clingan supporting Sanogo.
“I expected this,” Hurley said of Clingan's impact. “I was always puzzled when I would get asked in the preseason, ‘Would you be able to play him?'
“Play him? There are NBA people are coming in here and looking at the kid's skill and size. So just because of the transition, I guess, from high school basketball, his senior year he lost a lot of weight and got in such great shape — I think we already were confident in what we had. I would say early in the year, it surprised me, how he dominated early on. I would say that was surprising, just the level he did it at early.”