The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Huskies facing third straight ranked foe
HOUSTON — On Feb. 6, 1999, UConn, the No. 1-ranked team in the nation, stormed into Maples Pavilion and topped No. 4 Stanford, 70-59, behind 23 points from Khalid El-Amin.
It ended a brutal, three-game stretch for the Huskies that began with a 78-74 win at No. 9 St. John’s, followed by a 59-42 loss to No. 16 Syracuse in Hartford. That’s three straight games against Top 25 teams, something you’d think the Huskies had to endure frequently during their time in the Big East.
Surprsingly, it would be the last time the Huskies played three straight games against ranked teams in the regular season.
Until Thursday night. When UConn faces No. 25 Houston on Thursday at the Fertitta Center (9 p.m., ESPNU), it will complete the Huskies’ most difficult three-game span of games in a long while. UConn (10-7, 1-3 AAC) lost in doubleovertime to No. 16 Wichita State on Jan. 12, and is coming off a tough, 61-55 setback at No. 14 Villanova on Saturday.
Now, it’s not exactly the Murderers’ Row that the ’99 Huskies went up against en route to an eventual national title. Wichita State isn’t even ranked anymore, the result of consecutive losses following the win in Hartford (including a home loss to Houston on Saturday). Villanova doesn’t appear to be the national-title contender it was in 2016 and 2018 (though who really knows this season), and Houston (14-4, 4-1 AAC) is in a bit of a rebuild after losing several key players from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team.
Still, it’s three straight ranked teams, something the Huskies haven’t faced in the regular season in 21 years and in any capacity since the 2014 NCAA tournament, when they vanquished Villanova, Iowa State, Michigan
State and Florida en route to their fourth national title.
“This part of the schedule can either break you,” coach Dan Hurley said, “or signal to you that we’re getting closer as a program, that we’re making progress. We’re coming off playing a very good team very well on the road and having a chance to win that game. Obviously, we’ve had a number of close, difficult losses against some quality teams, so this is where you have to be mentally tough.”
Of course, UConn hasn’t had much success against ranked teams in recent years. The Huskies are 4-27 against Top 25 teams over the past six seasons and are 0-8 in such games on the road. UConn is 3-8 at home and 1-11 at neutral sites against ranked teams since the start of the 201415 season.
The Huskies were never really in their first two road games of the season, consecutive losses at Cincinnati and South Florida. But they led Villanova by four points with about five minutes left at Wells Fargo Center before the Wildcats rallied back behind some clutch 3-pointers and bad UConn turnovers.
Hurley knows the challenge the Huskies face on Thursday night.
“We’re going to have to be incredibly tough. It’s our fourth road game in our last six and we’ve played in a few hostile environments. They’ve got
a great thing going at home with the new arena and great crowds … so we have to be able to keep our composure and play to our own identity — defend, rebound the ball, play with tremendous toughness and try to see if we can put ourselves in the position that we’ve put ourselves several times this year, giving ourselves a chance down the stretch in the second half, to win.”
RIM RATTLINGS
⏩ Surprisingly, UConn didn’t play three straight regular-season games against ranked teams a whole lot, even in the halcyon days of the Big East. Before that stretch in 1999, the last time the Huskies did so was in 1995, when they played No. 9 Syracuse, No. 22 Georgetown and No. 15 Villanova in consecutive games. UConn, ranked No. 1 in the land at the start of the stretch, beat the Orange and Hoyas but lost to Villanova and dropped to No. 4 in the rankings.
Prior to that, UConn hadn’t played three straight ranked teams in the regular season since 1989 — a loss at No. 13 Seton Hall, a win over No. 1 Syracuse and a loss at No. 3 Georgetown.
The Huskies nearly had such a stretch two seasons ago, when they played at Arizona, at Auburn and home against Wichita State. But while Arizona and Wichita were ranked, Auburn was getting votes but just outside the Top 25.