New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Who’s on point?
Transfers Newton, Diarra battling it out for starting job
ROCKY HILL — Dan Hurley has three starters set in stone as the 2022-23 college basketball season looms a month away.
The UConn men’s basketball coach said on Friday morning that fans can count on seeing Andre Jackson, Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sanogo in the starting lineup come the Huskies’ season-opener on Nov. 7 against Stonehill. All three, Hurley noted, are Big East all-conference level players and potential NBA players a year from now.
“If you have three of the better players in your conference, you’re almost guaranteed to have a really good year,” Hurley told a group of about 300 at a Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Sheraton Hartford South Hotel. “Unless the coaching sucks.”
He noted that the Huskies could opt to start Virginia Tech Nahiem Alleyne as a fourth guard out on the perimeter, or go with a face-up power forward who can stretch defenses with his shot — either sophomore Samson Johnson or redshirt freshman Alex Karaban.
That leaves one rather important position to fill. Who will be the Huskies’ point guard?
Will it be Tristen Newton, the East Carolina transfer who is “wired to score,” or Hassan Diarra, the Texas A&M transfer brimming with confidence, work ethic and clutch play?
“We’ve got two guys who are really competing for it right now,” said Hurley, now in his fifth season as UConn coach. “Both guys are older players that have come in here and been proven.”
Newton, who averaged 17.7 points per game last season at ECU and once dumped 25 on UConn as a freshman, would have seemed to have the inside track at the position. But it’s clear that the first couple of weeks of Hurley’s hard-nosed practices have been a tough on the 6-foot-5 senior.
“It’s an adjustment,” Hurley noted. “It’s a pretty big jump to the Big East.”
Diarra didn’t come with the same scoring resume, but he is certainly Hurley’s type of player.
And, the coach believes, he’ll be UConn fans’ type of player, as well.
“Hassan is a dog,” Hurley told the crowd. “You’re gonna love Hassan. You’re gonna love the way he plays, the spirit, the confidence, the swagger. It’s something I felt last year’s team was missing a little bit.”
Still, he apparently hasn’t stepped up and grabbed that starting spot yet, either. Hurley hopes both players can take from the example set by the man they’re replacing as UConn’s point. After transferring from Howard and sitting out a season, R.J. Cole lost his starting job midway through his junior year but quickly won it back after he “looked in the mirror and he grew from that experience.”
“There’s a level of patience we’ve got to have with Tristen and Hassan,” Hurley noted. “I would say collectively at that position,
it’s the most we’ve had. R.J. left some big shoes to fill, but I think the combination of the two right now is really, really competitive.”
Then again, does it really matter all that much who starts? Hurley said both will end up playing starter’s minutes anyway. Plus, in this era of position-less basketball, the Huskies have Jackson, the 6-6 athletic freak who may not be a point guard straight out of Central Casting, but boasts the best court vision and passing ability of all.
Jackson played significant minutes as the Huskies’ chief facilitator last season, when Cole was on the bench or even alongside him, allowing the highscoring Cole to play off the ball.
“We’ve always allowed our perimeter people to have the ball in their hands, whether that’s in transition off the defensive glass or the closest guard to the outlet,” Hurley noted. “We allow most of our guards to play in ball screens, because we develop them that way.”
Expect to see a lot more of that from Jackson, who has clearly made a huge impression on Hurley this off-season, both on and off the court. Hurley named Jackson and Sanogo team captains, something he had yet to do in his tenure at UConn. Jackson has gone above and beyond.
“He may go down on my Mount Rushmore,” Hurley said. “He’s threatening for maybe the No. 1 spot for my favorite player I’ve ever coached. A true captain.”
So Hurley will happily hand the facilitator keys to Jackson at times this season, slide Newton (or Diarra) to the wing and let the chips fall.
“I think the vision for this team, obviously, was to have a couple of really important players on the roster with the proven track record of playing the position, like Hassan and Tristen,” Hurley told reporters, shortly after his speech ended. “But those guys both also can score. Hassan is an attacking player. (Newton) has good size, he’ll help us with some of the scoring we lost with Tyrese (Martin) and R.J. And Andre, one of his super powers is his vision and facilitating.”
“The vision for this group is to put Andre in a position where he’s getting downhill at the rim or in the paint, with three shooters and a big finisher. That could be great for us.”
RIM RATTLINGS
Among the businessmen in attendance was former UConn forward and twotime national champion Tyler Olander. The Manchester product is looking to get back into college basketball and may have a volunteer assistant job lined up at the University of Saint Joseph, the Division III program that Jim Calhoun put on the map and is now being coached by former UConn assistant Glen Miller