Missed opportunity
Richmond sparks No. 24 Seton Hall in OT win over Huskies
NO. 24 SETON HALL 90 UCONN 87
NEWARK, N.J. — Kadary Richmond was coveted by UConn while he was in the transfer portal last spring. He wound up going to Seton Hall.
On Saturday, Richmond made the Huskies pay for that recruiting miss.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Richmond, who was averaging 6.9 points per game entering the contest, exploded for a career-high 27 points. His final two were the biggest, an inside hoop with 31.6 seconds left in overtime that put 24thranked Seton Hall ahead for good in a 90-87 win over the Huskies.
Richmond’s prior careerhigh was 16, notched in
December, 2020 while he was still at Syracuse. He surpassed the total alone during one incredible stretch in the second half, when he scored 17 straight and 21 of his team’s 23 overall as the Pirates rallied back from a nine-point deficit.
“That was obviously his best performance of the year,” UConn coach Dan Hurley rued. “I don’t think we were prepared for him to take over the way he did. I don’t think he’s done that yet. We started trying to run the double-team late at him, he turned it over a couple of times. We were kind of waiting for him to come back down to Earth, but he never really did.”
Despite Richmond’s heroics, UConn (10-4, 1-2 Big East) had chances to win this one. Tied at 77 and coming out of a timeout with 32.9 seconds left in regulation, the Huskies tried a pick-and-roll with point guard R.J. Cole and center Adama Sanogo. But Ike Obiagu, Seton Hall’s 7-foot-2 center, intervened, and Cole couldn’t hit Sanogo and instead tossed up an air-ball.
The Hall’s Bryce Aiken missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer to send the game to overtime.
Seton Hall (11-3, 2-2) led
by four in OT, but the Huskies rallied back and led 87-86 after a Sanogo jump hook with 45.7 seconds left. Richmond countered by backing down Isaiah Whaley for an inside hoop and foul (though he missed the free throw) to put the Pirates ahead for good.
“He just made a better move,” Hurley said of Richmond, a 6-foot-6 sophomore.
After a timeout, the Huskies again tried to feed Sanogo. Tyrese Martin held the ball out on the wing, but again Obiagu fronted Sanogo, and Martin wound up getting trapped and losing the ball with 2.3 seconds remaining.
A pair of Aiken free throws sealed the deal.
“With Ike fronting him, there’s an opportunity to drive it, with the shotblocker now out of position to contest at the rim,” Hurley explained. “I think Tyrese stayed with it a little bit longer, then pass-faked. That created another lane for him to drive it. I think maybe a little bit of fatigue there, with the decisionmaking by ‘Rese.”
Sanogo, who has been on a minutes-restriction due to an abdominal injury and missed practice earlier in the week with a hamstring issue, finished with 18 points and a career-best 16 rebounds.
“I think I’m 100 percent back now, yeah,” the 6foot-9 sophomore center said, adding that he still feels a little bit of abdominal pain, “but I can play with that pain.”
“Pretty good showing,” Hurley added, “for a guy that really hasn’t played for what feels like an eternity.”
Cole added 15 points on 4-for-13 shooting, but fouled out with 2:19 left in OT.
“It’s always tough not being able to play, but I felt like my team was good enough,” said Cole, a New Jersey native. “I felt like we could have finished that one out. It was definitely tough to watch, but it was still a winnable game.”
There were nine lead changes and seven ties in the second half and overtime.
Martin (13), Tyler Polley (11) and Andre Jackson (10) also hit double figures for the Huskies, but it wasn’t enough to overcome 19 turnovers (15 combined by Martin, Jackson, Cole and Jordan Hawkins). The Pirates scored 26 points off those turnovers.
Despite all that, Hurley was proud of the effort UConn put forth in its first game in 17 days. The Huskies had nine players test positive for COVID-19 in the days following a Dec. 21 win at Marquette, and didn’t return to practice as a team until Monday. Even . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 36 10 — 87 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 40 13 — 90 at that, UConn had several players limited in practice over the past week and only had their first full, 5-on-5 practice on Thursday.
“Proud of the way we played,” Hurley said. “To show up the way we did I thought was pretty impressive, in terms of the effort we gave and the chances we gave ourselves to get what probably would’ve been the best win since I’ve been here, considering all things.”
Instead, it was another “excruciating loss,” per Hurley. UConn’s four losses — three of them to ranked teams — have been by a combined total of 14 points.
“We could have won any of those games,” Hurley noted. “We could easily be sitting as a top-five team in the country right now if we closed out games a little bit better, or found a way to win these.
“But,” he added, “we’ve got to stop losing.”
RIM RATTLINGS
1 Isaiah Whaley, one of UConn’s last players to come out of COVID protocol, was limited on Saturday. The grad forward wasn’t in the starting lineup for just the second time this season, though he wound up playing 23 minutes.
UConn started Cole, Martin, Akok, Sanogo and
Jackson for the second time this season. The prior time was in a Nov. 25 loss to Michigan State in the Battle 4 Atlantis, which Whaley sat out entirely after a fainting episode at the end of the previous day’s game.
1 Alexis Yetna, the Putnam Science Academy product who did damage against the Huskies with South Florida in years past, did not play for Seton Hall on Saturday due to a head injury. Yetna, a 6-8 grad forward, averages 9.8 points and 7.0 rebounds per game.
1 Not surprisingly, Bob Hurley Sr., the Hall of Fame high school coach and Dan’s father, sat behind the UConn bench. Alex Karaban, the 2022 UConn signee who enrolled at the school early and officially joined the program on Friday, sat on the bench, not in uniform.
1 UConn’s radio broadcast team of Wayne Norman and Mike Crispino called Saturday’s game remotely, and will continue to do so for road games for at least the near future. Norman will not do do home games for the time being. Crispino will be joined by Adam Giordino, UConn football’s sideline reporter, for home games at their regular courtside seats.