Huskies roll to easy win over Tulane
STORRS — A nice, relatively easy victory.
No big leads withered away to deficits. No deficits of any kind, as a matter of fact..
No coaching ejections, and at least for a couple of hours, no thoughts of selfimposed sanctions (that came before the game).
On this Saturday afternoon, in a game started 51⁄ 2 hours early due to an impending snowstorm, UConn waltzed to a muchneeded, double-digit victory. Against 87 71 a league opponent, no less.
Jalen Adams poured in a season-high 31 points to lead the Huskies to an 87-71 win over Tulane before a hearty 7,437 at Gampel Pavilion. It’s UConn’s most decisive American Athletic Conference win since a 97-51 win over South Florida at Gampel on Feb. 8, 2017.
“I want to thank the crowd,” said coach Dan Hurley. “I thought it was an incredible turnout for a time-change, mid-January, before the students are really, officially back. Obviously, not exactly our finest week for UConn basketball. So, a lot of pressure coming into this game. There’s been
a lot swirling around the program this week. I think it was important for us to come out and play well and show some heart.”
Josh Carlton and Christian Vital each finished with 18 points and eight rebounds and Alterique Gilbert added 12 for UConn, which snapped a two-game losing streak and improved to 11-8 overall and 2-4 in the AAC.
Tulane fell to 4-13, 0-5. “Defeat would have been unimaginable,” Hurley continued, then paused for a moment and added, “... Bad. This has been not the greatest week for our fans. The program is going through something it probably hasn’t gone through in a long time. Jalen showing up the way he did today, Josh as a young player, the effort, and the way we showed up and played, we owe it to ourselves because we work really hard. We owe it to our fans to show up this way.”
The Huskies never trailed, bouncing out to a 14-point (23-9) lead after hitting 10 of their first 20 shots while Tulane missed 12 of its first 16.
The Green Wave started scoring with relative ease and cut into the UConn lead, getting to within five in the final minute. Adams’ wing jumper with 9.3 seconds left gave the Huskies a 37-30 lead at the break.
Tulane hung around for the first six minutes of the latter half, closing to within three at one point and within five (51-46) after a pair of Caleb Daniels free throws with 14:13 to play.
In the huddle during a timeout, Hurley laid into his team.
“Do you want to have a season?’ he asked. “Do you want to be in last place at the end of this game? Do you want to give yourselves a chance to have a season? Are we really gonna do this right now? Are we gonna really lay down defensively like this?”
UConn responded with an 11-0 run, highlighted by a trio of 3-pointers from Adams, and never looked back.
“They took the message to heart and we picked up our play,” said Hurley.
Added Adams: “When the other team gets two or three in a row, (Hurley) gives me that eye contact to go make a play, be one of our ‘ballers.’ That’s what I try to do.”
Adams’s 31 points were the most by a Husky player since he scored 31 against Monmouth on Dec. 2, 2017. He fell just short of his career-best of 34, but topped his season-high of 27 set a few nights earlier in a loss at Tulsa.
Many of those points were empty in a last-ditch comeback bid. On Saturday, Adams was in the flow of the game.
“It always feels good when you have a good game and your team gets the win,” the senior guard said. “It doesn’t get any better than that. As long as we get the win. I don’t really care about the points.”
Added Hurley: “Coaches really aren’t supposed to say this, but if he’s not taking 18-20 shots a game for us, as well as playmaking, it’s gonna decrease our chances of winning. For us to be good, I’m not gonna say like Jimmer Fredette, but he’s gonna have to play with that type of attacking mindset.”
And that’s what Hurley got from his best player on Saturday, a day when the bad news of the past week was, at least for a couple of hours, out of mind.
“Everything will be past us soon, and this thing will start heading back,” Hurley promised. “I know it’s tough on our fans, but I was brought here for a reason. I hate to sound like Joel Embiid, but trust the process. Everything will be great. It’s been a tough week, there’s been a lot swirling around. Eventually, it will be behind us, and UConn will be back to doing what UConn does.”
RIM RATTLINGS:
▶ Vital’s 3-pointer with 7:25 left in the first half put him over the 1,000-point mark for his career. The junior guard is the 51st UConn player to reach that milestone.
▶ Sid Wilson (thumb, ankle) did not play on Saturday, but he should be ready to go when the Huskies host Wichita State on Jan. 26.
“If he doesn’t play next Saturday, then dudes from the Bronx are soft,” Hurley joked. “He couldn’t play today, he tried, he rehabbed 3-4 times a day, he just couldn’t do it. If he can’t go, he’ll know that, because I’m gonna say it all week.”
▶ Wayne Norman was back as radio analyst after missing the prior three games with pharyngitis.