‘Air Fryer’ Hawkins looks for more consistency in Vegas

shots, different day for Jordan Hawkins.

Hawkins, the UConn men’s basketball team’s standout sophomore, followed strikingly similar scripts in the Huskies’ first and second round NCAA Tournament games last week in Albany, N.Y.

On Friday, Hawkins went scoreless in the first half of UConn’s first-round bout with Iona. He buried four 3-pointers in the latter half to spearhead the Huskies’ comeback victory.

In a second-round game on Sunday against Saint Mary’s, Hawkins, the Huskies’ secondleading scorer at 15.9 points per game, again found himself without a point at halftime. And again, he knocked down four 3pointers in the latter half as UConn broke open a close game to win by 15.

“I think it must be an Albany thing,” Hawkins shrugged. “Vegas, I’m going to be much betSame ter.”

UConn fans can only hope Hawkins is even better in the West Regional semifinals on Thursday against Arkansas at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (7:15 p.m., CBS), though they’ll take the results. And though those results were remarkably similar for UConn, they came about in very different ways for Hawkins.

Against Saint Mary’s, the 6foot-5 sophomore guard attempted just one shot before picking up two fouls in the first seven minutes and sitting out the rest of the half. The Huskies were able to turn an eight-point deficit into a one-point halftime lead in Hawkins’ absence, but clearly needed their sharpshooter to step up.

“We felt great about the position we were in,” coach Dan Hurley insisted, “because we knew that he was going to get hot.”

It took a while, but once Hawkins buried his first trey, in transition, about 9 1/2 minutes into the half to cap a 10-0 UConn run, the floodgates opened. He wound up hitting four 3-pointers in a five-minute stretch to help put the game out of reach.

“All it takes is one for a shooter to get comfortable,” Hawkins said. “I got comfortable, found my stroke and let it fly.”