Struggling UConn men turn attention to AAC tournament
Ollie's challenge: Field a healthy team for Hartford
UConn coach Kevin Ollie's biggest challenge this season has nothing to do with winning games. It's been fielding a healthy team. Eight players missed a total of 95 complete games this season due to injury or illness. Terry Larrier, Alterique Gilbert and Mamadou Diarra all suffered season-ending injuries to account for the majority of those absences.
The hurting Huskies are limping to the finish line.
Sixth-seeded UConn (14-16) opens American Athletic Conference tournament play with a first round game against No. 11 South Florida (7-22) on Thursday at the XL Center (8:30 p.m., ESPNews).
"Just happy to get through with the NO. 6 UCONN VS. NO. 11 USF Thursday, 8:30 p.m. XL Center, ESPNews
season," Ollie said during Monday's AAC conference call. "There's been some ups and downs with injuries, but always postseason gives you a fresh new start."
After taking the day off Monday, the Huskies return to practice Tuesday. They'll continue to evaluate the status of starters Jalen Adams and Vance Jackson.
Adams, the AAC leader in assists and UConn's leading scorer, has been hobbled since leaving the SMU game on Feb. 25 in the first half with an ankle sprain. In the last two games, he's just 7-for-22 from the field and averaged eight points. He's lacked his usual explosiveness and limited his drives to the basket.
Jackson, who's shooting a team-best 39.7 percent from 3-point range, re-
mains in concussion protocol after missing the regular-season finale against Cincinnati on Sunday.
"Jalen is still ailing from an ankle injury and hopefully we can get one of the top shooters back, Vance, from concussion protocol," Ollie said. "First and foremost, we want to get healthy. Hopefully, we can go out and have a great successful AAC tournament run."
The Huskies will need production across the board to have any shot of winning four games in four days and defend their tournament title.
Ollie is crossing his fingers that he'll have enough healthy players to run a proper practice in the few days leading up to the AAC tourney. The shorthanded situation has forced Ollie to make adjustments throughout the season.
"Hopefully, we can go full speed (Tuesday)," Ollie said. "If we can't, then we've got to make adjustments like we've been doing all this year with the various injuries we've had.
"... We haven't had a full practice in awhile, where we could go five-onfive because we just haven't had the bodies to do that. I've been making adjustments in practice, giving them days off when typically I wouldn't give days off.
"It's just what it is. It's part of life and part of playing college basketball at this level. Guys get injured. As a coach, you've got to keep everything together and you've got to keep them believing and you've got to get the guys that are able to play and get their minds ready to go out and battle. That's what I'm going to do."