The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Familiar heartbreak
UConn ousted in Big East semis for third straight season
NEW YORK — Marquette had won the Big East regularseason championship that the UConn men's basketball team badly wanted.
The Huskies were hoping to get revenge by beating the Golden Eagles and advancing to Saturday night's Big East Tournament championship game. But Marquette wouldn't let it happen.
UConn's Joey Calcaterra misfired on a pair of 3-point attempts in the final 90 seconds, and Jordan Hawkins missed a long, wild shot at the buzzer as Marquette held on for a 70-68 victory in .the Big East semifinals on Friday night.
“Disappointing loss,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “I just thought Marquette really, really jumped us to start the game. I don't think we anticipated their ball pressure. I thought they put us on our heels.”
That it came in the semifinals for the third year in a row hurt even more for UConn (25-8). And that it came inside Madison Square Garden, the Huskies' “home away from home” that Hurley proclaimed UConn “owned” following a quarterfinal win over Providence a night earlier, perhaps stung the most.
Marquette coach Shaka Smart apparently took note of those comments.
“It felt like a lot of people were giving UConn the game coming in,” Smart, the Big East's Coach of the Year, noted. “And there were comments made about who owns the Garden and that kind of stuff. And, you know, we said, ‘Wait a minute, we won this league.' So, we're not taking a back seat to anybody.”
A back-and-forth first half ended with an Alex Karaban 3pointer and a 38-38 tie, but top-seeded Marquette hit its first six shots of the latter half. UConn went to an expansive zone defense that was effec
tive, helping the Huskies claw back from a 10-point deficit to tie the game at 60 on a Calcaterra pullup trey.
But the fourth-seeded Huskies could never get over the hump and never led in the second half. Kam Jones’ long 3-pointer at the shot-clock buzzer put Marquette (27-6) ahead for good. Karaban’s putback (off a wild miss by Tristen Newton) tied it at 64, but Chase Ross countered with a corner 3-pointer (his lone field goal of the game).
Adama Sanogo scored inside with 2:37 remaining and, stunningly, those were the final points of the game. Marquette’s Oso Ighodaro missed the front end of a one-and-one with just under two minutes left, and UConn came down the floor with a chance to tie or take the lead. Calcaterra’s 3-point attempt late in the shot clock missed badly with 1:23 left, but he’d get a much better look about a minute later.
With 39 seconds left, Calcaterra had a wideopen look from the corner that was just off the mark.
“I thought it was going in. It just hit back rim,” the grad transfer said. “One of the last two shots, I’ve just got to hit one ...”
UConn had one last chance, but failed to use its last timeout and settled for an off-balance Hawkins 3-ball that missed badly.
“I thought we had some great looks at 3’s there, down two, in transition,” Hurley rued. “A couple of 3’s get us to the lead. this time of year, obviously, our defense early in the second half let us down, but we toughened up a lot.”
Maybe the game got off to a prophetic start for the Huskies when highflying Andre Jackson Jr. missed an alley-oop dunk in the early seconds. He was fouled on the play, but missed both free throws, and Marquette’s Oso Ighodaro slammed home the game’s first points on the other end of the floor.
Jackson finished with just two points, two assists and one rebound in just 15 minutes of action before fouling out.
“That’s happened to me multiple times, multiple different games,” a despondent Jackson said afterwards. “I can’t get into foul trouble. It’s not good for the team, it’s not good for me. I can’t be in foul trouble, especially early in the game. I just had some reckless fouls, and I came into the game reckless. And that cost me and my team a lot.”
“Obviously, to have (Jackson) as a non-factor with the foul trouble, that hurt,” Hurley noted. “He’s the heart and soul of the team and one of our best players.”
But Jackson was hardly the only one to blame. Hawkins, who led the Big East in scoring this season in conference games, shot just 2-for-11 overall and 1-for-8 from 3 and finished with a mere five points. Tristen Newton shot 2-for-10.
“I thought we had chances to take the lead and surge ahead,” Hurley noted. “Just didn’t make the shots.”
Sanogo finished with 19 points and Alex Karaban and Nahiem Alleyne each added 10 for UConn.
Big East Player of the Year Tyler Kolek and Sixth Man Award winner David Joplin each scored 17 for top-seeded Marquette, which advances to the Big East tourney finals for the first time in program history and will face either Creighton or Xavier.
It’s the third straight year UConn (25-8) has lost in the conference tourney semifinals.
“Three pretty excruciating losses,” said Hurley, whose Huskies fell to Creighton in 2021 and Villanova last season. “We were hell-bent on playing for a championship (Saturday). I think there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that we were going to, with all due respect to Marquette — we know how outstanding they are. They’ve got a chance to be a Final Four team this year, or better.”
But Hurley clears his team has a similar chance, and few would doubt that. The NCAA Tournament selection show is on Sunday at 6 p.m., and UConn is likely looking at a No. 3 or 4 seed, which would be its highest since its nationalchampionship season of 2011, when it was also a No. 3 seed.
“I’m not too concerned about us being ready to go when that times come,” Calcaterra said. “We’ve got a lot of tough guys in this locker room. The coaching staff is going to do whatever they’ve got to do to prepare us and get us ready. So, I’m not too worried about that tournament right now. I’m just disappointed in tonight.”
“We know we have a special team,” Hurley added. “We’re not going to do what our past teams have done, which was to maybe get caught up in the wallow of losing. Losing in this environment in your conference tournament in the past couple of years has put us in a bad mental state. We’re not going to allow that to happen this year. We’re going to get our minds right very quickly and get ready to make a run next week.”
RIM RATTLINGS
• Legendary actor/comedian Bill Murray sat behind the Huskies’ bench, attending the second UConn game in a row at MSG. Murray’s son, Luke, is a UConn assistant coach. Dan Hurley’s father, Bob Sr., sat in the front row.