SHU not taking the easy road
Sacred Heart coach Anthony Latina, a Connecticut guy who knows about UConn and Providence, their history, their basketball, all of it, knew he wanted to play both schools this season. He just didn’t know initially when he was going to play them.
Game 1: Tuesday vs. Providence at Dunkin’ Donuts Center.
Game 2: Friday vs. UConn at Gampel Pavilion.
“How’s that for an old Big East challenge our first week?” Latina said when we connected Friday night. Not bad. Not bad at all. Latina, whose Pioneers are led by 68 junior E.J. Anosike, should have a strong team in the Northeast Conference. Coming off an 117 league finish and losing only one senior, Sacred Heart is picked second behind LIU in the preseason NEC poll. Three of the 11 coaches picked Sacred Heart to win the title.
Yet before the 18 NEC games after New Year’s are a dozen nonconference games, starting this week with a giant order of Providence and UConn. Yes, Sacred Heart starts against their toughest opponents.
“The dates weren’t necessarily by design,” Latina said Saturday when we reconnected after he watched his son Luke play in a fall basketball game. “As we put our schedule together, we were looking for a combination of games we think are attractive to our players, our recruits, and makes sense for us as a program and an institution. Providence and UConn fall perfectly into those categories.
“As Catholic universities, we compete with Providence for students, so from a greater mission standpoint, Providence makes sense. Ed Cooley has done a great job and, obviously,
Providence’s basketball history goes all the way back to Rick Pitino and Ernie DiGregorio and beyond. UConn is UConn. It’s the standard for basketball in Connecticut and is great for exposure. We recruit heavily in the tristate area and UConn’s brand is a special brand that only a handful of programs have nationally.”
And?
“From there we had to work out the dates,” Latina said.
When the state’s seven coaches gathered recently in Avon for Seth Greenberg’s annual TipOff Breakfast, Latina was quoted as saying, “(UConn) needed an opener, and we needed the money.” That came off a little mercenary. “I thought my quote, I wanted to say, ‘They needed an opener, and the money was right.’ Put that. The money is a major component, but it has to make sense for our program and the mission of the university.
“Certainly, we are going to be challenged right off the bat.”
Latina, who took over as head coach from Dave Bike in 2013 after eight years as his assistant, played No. 20 Ohio State in 20142015, No. 10 Arizona in 20162017, not to mention falling 8249 to UConn on Dec. 2, 2015. Cane Broome may be remembered as missing 13 of 16 shots that game, although he’ll be remembered for hitting the 3pointer that buried UConn last February after he transferred to Cincinnati.
Still, these are no random earlyseason, nonconference games. This is opening night at the Dunk and opening night at Gampel. Bang. Bang. Is it good to catch the two right away, or is there danger of earlyseason emotional fallout if you don’t rise to the challenge?
“That’s one of those interesting questions that is very hard to answer until after the fact,” Latina said. “Maybe get them early before they are really clicking. We’re a young veteran team with sophomores and juniors who already have played a lot of minutes. You never know how it will play out. If we go out there and play great or are fortunate enough to win, it’ll be a great time to play them. If we play poorly and have it taken to us …”
It’ll be a lousy time. “Look, we expect to play well,” Latina said. “The positive is the players realize we have to be tight with our execution and game plan. I think we have their attention more early because of the caliber of the opponent. We’re excited. We have to shoot well in these two games … We’ve got to take care of the ball. We just can’t give up layups and dunks to Providence and UConn.”
Sean Hoehn, who led Sacred Heart with 17.9 points a game last season, has graduated. Everyone else is back. Sophomore Koreem Ozier, who scored 14 points a game as freshman, Kinnon LaRose, Cameron Parker and Tyler Thomas, a freshman from Amity who Latina said can really shoot and will get minutes, can replace Hoehn’s points and assists. Replacing Hoehn’s leadership, poise and efficiency will not be as easy.
The one guy Latina is eager to put on the bigger stage this week is Anosike. After averaging 14.3 points and 8.1 rebounds a game last season, he was named the NEC Most Improved Player and AllNEC second team. Recently, he was named preseason AllNEC team. Anosike’s name should be familiar to UConn fans. His sister Nicky, a favorite of the late Pat Summitt, played on Tennessee’s last two national champions. His brother O.D., meanwhile, twice led the nation in rebounding with Siena.
“In my 25 years as head or assistant coach, E.J. is the best combination of talent, work ethic and character that I’ve ever had,” Latina said. “He is a special player and person. Comes from as good a family as you can have, a family with doctors and professionals. He’s a guy you hope your own kids turn out to be like. Supercommitted as a student and player. Top four hardest workers I’ve ever had on the court and serious about being part of the community.”
In a day and age where instant gratification is so important to young people, Latina talked about how Anosike, one of top recruits Sacred Heart has landed, started out playing only eight minutes as freshmen, stranded behind a number of senior bigs.
“He never complained once,” Latina said. “He just kept working. If he had been a guard, he would have played 2930 minutes a game. He comes back last year, secondteam allleague player in his first year playing full time, and now he’s a possible player of the year.
“I think he’s going to have a fantastic year. I think he’s excited about playing against the high level of competition this week. He has aspirations of playing professionally, which I think he should. I can’t say enough about him. He’s a once in a lifetime kind of player for us.”
Latina played at South Catholic in Hartford and at Brandeis before starting as an assistant coach at UMass Lowell, for Howie Dickenman at Central Connecticut and then at Sacred Heart. Like he said, he’s starting his 25th year in coaching.
“I feel like I’m 25, did I start coaching at one?” said Latina, 44.
No, but he wasn’t all that much older when he started following UConn. Latina thinks it’s terrific for UConn to rejoin the Big East next season.
“Getting back to the Big East, just from name recognition for recruits is such a big factor,” Latina said. “The AAC is a tremendous league, but UConn fans can identify so much more with Big East schools. Houston and Cincinnati last year, you saw how good they were, but they don’t carry the cache that Villanova and Georgetown carries, because everyone around here grew up with them.
“What Jim Calhoun did and as ( Jim Boeheim) said it’s the best building job in the history of college basketball. UConn went from a regional farm school to a Top 10program national brand in a very short period of time .As a fan living and dying with UConn, speaking for people like me who grew up watching UConn, Danny Hurley is the right guy at the right time to take UConn back to the level people are accustomed to. That’s not easy. Danny is a tremendous recruiter and coach. He has the energy and grit it will take.”