No more mulligans
UConn needs to step up its effort on defense against Hartford
Dan Hurley gave his team a mulligan for its subpar defensive effort in its season-opener on Wednesday .
Another such effort on Friday night could be the basketball equivalent of a two-stroke penalty. Or worse.
A day removed from a 27-point win over Central Connecticut State, UConn hosts Hartford on Friday (8 p.m., CBS Sports Network) at Gampel Pavilion.
Hartford is no CCSU. The Hawks were a game away from an
NCAA tournament berth last season, slated to face Vermont in the America East championship game before COVID-19 intervened. They’ve got four of their top five scorers back, including former Marquette guard Traci Carter, whom coach John Gallagher calls “the best defensive guard I’ve ever coached.”
Hartford’s got size (four players 6-foot-9 or taller), goes about 10deep and is phyiscal. This is no pushover. While CCSU, a three-win team last season, was able to trade leads with UConn for most of the first half on Wednesday, trailed by just seven at halftime and was never really put away until the final 10 minutes of play, Hartford promises to present much more of a challenge.
“I think they will be able, for 40 minutes, to sustain the type of play that Central was able to take to the court,” Hurley said. “Hartford is a better team. They’ll be able to sustain it for a full game. That’s a scary game on Friday.”
Gallagher is a little more restrained in his expectations.
“We may not be ready for UConn Friday night,” the 11th-year Hartford coach said. “But come March or April, whenever the season is coming on its winding end, we’ll be a different team. We’ll have a chance to be really good at the end of the season.”
Hartford’s season-opener on Wednesday was canceled after its opponent, Merrimack, had a COVID-related issue affect the team. The bout with UConn likely wouldn’t have happened in a normal season, but this is no normal season. Since COVID-19 first shut everything down in March, Gallagher and UConn assistant Tom Moore have had multiple conversa