UConn men face hungry PC tonight
On the surface, UConn’s final regular season game today is relatively meaningless.
The Huskies already have locked up the program’s 11th Big East regular season title as well as the top seed and first round bye in next week’s conference tournament in New York.
A loss at Providence won’t hurt their seeding in the upcoming NCAA tournament. They’re considered in the driver’s seat to secure one of the four No. 1 seeds.
Dig a little deeper, though, and there is something significant that No. 2 UConn (27-3, 17-2) can still accomplish. With a victory, the Huskies can make history and set the Big East regular season record for conference wins and program record for most overall wins in a regular season.
“The staff and the roster are filled with great competitors, so there’s plenty of internal pride that we all have in winning and performing at a championship level every time we take the court,” coach Dan Hurley said. “We know we’ve got a chance to potentially post an historic number, both in terms of Big East regular season wins and regular season wins (in program history).
“... Doing historic things at a place like UConn is impossible. But we’re certainly talking about that as part of a package of things that are motivating us right now. We know what’s ahead of us, the most exciting time of the year. But we’re going for historic marks.”
UConn will be running into a desperate Providence (1911, 10-9) at 8 p.m. at Amica Mutual Pavilion. The Friars badly need to improve their resume in order to secure a spot in the NCAA tournament.
Road trips to Providence have gone sideways before for UConn, which suffered a 73-61 loss in its visit last season.
The Huskies survived a foul-filled, rock fight in the first meeting this season, posting a hard-fought 74-65 win in Storrs on Jan. 31.
“It was a very physical, very defensive game, with a lot of fouls called,” Hurley said. “It was an ugly game that we played the first time. We've got to be prepared for physicality. But it's also a basketball game, so we've got to prepare to execute but also be physically prepared for everything that goes into the way that they play.”
Hurley has great respect for Devin Carter, a Big East player of the year candidate, and mobile forward Josh Oduro who've kept the Friars respectable after losing Bryce Hopkins with a season-ending injury in early January. He voted for both of them for the All-Big East teams that will be released on Sunday. “They're that good,” Hurley said. It's been a challenging week for the Huskies, who'll play their third game in seven days.
A charter flight cancellation forced the Huskies to stay in Milwaukee until Thursday, a day after beating Marquette. They practiced Thursday at the University of Milwaukee, drove two hours to Chicago after another flight cancellation and flew home from there, arriving on campus after 11 p.m.
“We tried to turn lemons into lemonade and get some of the prep work done preparing for Providence,” Hurley said.
At least the Huskies didn't have to board another flight for their final regular season game.
They'll play in a hostile atmosphere on Saturday for the final time this season, with post-season games all on neutral courts.
All three of their losses have come on the road. They want to avoid adding to that total.
“We just want to be the team that we've been,” Hurley said. “There's going to be a rebirth (next week in the Big East tournament). … This has been a great, great season. We really want to try to finish it off.”