Dan Hurley, notoriously hard on himself, always quick to find some area for himself and his team to get better, couldn’t help but acknowledge the little voice that got in his head after UConn’s loss at No. 15 Creighton.
The thought, one that seems nothing short of absurd from the outside, crept into his mind: “Will we ever win again?”
UConn got beat in Omaha. The day before, the reigning national champs were unanimously voted the AP No. 1 team in the country for the first time in program history. It was their sixth consecutive week atop the poll, and that loss wasn’t going to move the Huskies off their pace for a No. 1 seed in both the NCAA and Big East tournaments.
“You know the funny thing about (it), you win 14 straight, you don’t lose for two months (and) you lose a game, whether you lose by 20 or you lose by two, it’s jarring,” Hurley said after his Huskies responded with a 78-54 win over Villanova at home Saturday night.
“Losing does that to you. Failure is jarring. But we were able to get two good days of practice,” he said. “The defensive mistakes at Creighton were embarrassing mistakes. I mean, they were just like some things that haven’t happened here in years in terms of just losing people. We watched that, we drilled that, and the team played a little angry today.”
Creighton, a good team with a great home environment, had long stretches where any shot it took seemed destined to go through the hoop. Every defensive mistake UConn made was taken advantage of, and the Bluejays made nothing easy on the other end.
Saturday’s performance was a “championship response,” Hurley said, that little voice out of his mind for the time being.
UConn held Villanova to just 33.3% shooting from the field and a season-low 12.5% from beyond the arc, where the Wildcats made just three of their 24 attempts. UConn had a 46-32 advantage on the backboard and ran away with 18 points in transition.
Hurley’s critique on Saturday? UConn could’ve shot the ball better.
The Huskies made 42.9% from the field and 10 of 32 from beyond the arc. Cam Spencer, who was particularly hard on himself after an uncharacteristic performance at Creighton, lifted the team with an efficient 25 points on 9 of 13 shooting, making five 3-pointers for the fifth time this year. Tristen Newton, tied with Spencer as UConn’s top scorers (15.2), recorded the fourth triple-double of his career with 10 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists, though he shot just 3 of 10 from the field.
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The stat line that stood out most was Alex Karaban‘s. The redshirt sophomore forward, who’s been one of UConn’s most consistent players over the last two seasons, saw his shooting slump continue as he finished just 1 of 8 from the field, 1 of 7 from deep. Still effective in every other aspect of the game, Karaban has shot just 5-for-24 from the field and 3 of 16 from deep in his last four games.
His lone make on Saturday came with 25 seconds left on Newton’s 10th assist, completing his triple-double.
“It was fitting that Alex made it, because he missed everything he looked at,” Hurley said. “The good news for Alex now is he’s got like a clear runway to light it up the rest of the way. He’s gotten his bad stuff out of the way, which sometimes is good for a shooter where it’s like, ‘Now I know I’ve got the next month, I’m gonna hit everything.'”
“Alex is one of the hardest workers you’ll ever meet,” Spencer said. “When shots aren’t going in it’s definitely frustrating, but we have all the confidence in the world in Alex. Keep shooting until they go in, because he’s an unbelievable shooter and we need him to win games. They’ll fall.”
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Richard Hamilton, who had his number retired at halftime, was joined for the ceremony by Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun and a handful of teammates, including Kevin Freeman, Jake Voskuhl, Edmund Saunders and Souleymane Wane.
He was the latest former Husky invited into the locker room to speak with the team after a game, saying “just to stick together,” freshman Stephon Castle relayed. “(He said) we have an opportunity to do something big this year and to just keep our heads on straight, stay humble and try and stay on that track.”
“Dan’s got them boys playing,” Hamilton told reporters before the game. “The one thing that Calhoun always did with us and make sure that we had was mental toughness. And if you watch this group play, they’re mentally tough and it starts with their head coach.”
UConn hosted the 2004 national championship team when it was inducted into the Huskies of Honor on Jan. 28, inviting the likes of Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon and others to speak to the current Huskies after they thrashed Xavier in Hartford. Ray Allen has been a frequent visitor as well, along with all-time leading scorer Chris Smith and others.
“It’s meant a lot,” Hurley said of having former players want to come back. “We’ve embraced that straight away, my relationship with Jim Calhoun was one of the most important things to me. That relationship has helped me become a better coach, it’s helped me navigate this job, as well as the relationship with Geno (Auriemma).”
Unprompted, Hurley mentioned the healing that has gone on in regards to former head coach Kevin Ollie, who played at UConn in the early 90s and took over as head coach following Calhoun’s retirement, leading the program to its fourth national championship in 2014. Ollie was recently promoted to interim head coach of the Brooklyn Nets.
“There’s a lot of healing that’s gone on and hopefully we could, at some point, heal enough to get K.O. back,” Hurley said. “Wish him real well with the Brooklyn Nets in his opportunity.”
