Happy New Year … Why Has UConn Been Off for 11 Days?

UConn’s No Good, Insufferable, Terrible, Very Long Break

The Story: The men’s basketball team, which faces USF tomorrow, has not played since Dec. 22 against Villanova, an insufferable layoff. Dan Hurley is as about as happy as you are for this 11-day gap.

WHY THE BREAK? BLAME OLLIE: We can blame Kevin Ollie for such a long break. Seriously. Ollie did not like last year’s schedule, per Hearst Connecticut Media. Specifically, playing Arizona and Auburn and then opening the AAC with a road game was the catalyst for this year’s schedule. Ollie did not want to spend the holidays away from home and wanted to wait until the AAC opener in January to play again. 

The Huskies have not played a true road game yet this season, content with neutral site games at Madison Square Garden and in New Jersey. UConn, at 9-4, will play in front of a hostile crowd for the first time at USF.

WHAT HURLEY SAID: “In the future, I think you’ll see some changes with the way we do non-conference [scheduling], relative to maybe the opponents and the spacing of the games. There’s been challenges that way. Obviously, you’d love to have a game after the holiday. You’d love to have at least one road game in the non-conference [schedule].”

WILLIAMS BACK, DIARRA NOT YET: Little-used forward Kwintin Williams is back to practicing after coming down with flu-like symptoms before Christmas. Williams continues to be a player of intrigue not for his jumping ability, but rather his cryptic tweets that suggest he’s leaving the program. Mamadou Diarra remains out indefinitely and has not played at all this season. He has missed much of his career with injuries and Hurley has said his return could come this month, but it is not close.

The Co$t of Firing a Defen$ive Coordinator

The Story: Billy Crocker didn’t work out as defensive coordinator, and before his replacement is named, we have to find out why. Was it the 3-3-5? An inability to get on the same page with Randy Edsall? Or was it just talent? Probably a mix of all three. What it is has done is cost the program a year’s worth of a coordinator’s salary and stalled the team’s development.

THE PRICE OF A NEW DC: The face value of UConn’s loss is Crocker’s $300,000 for 2019. Crocker signed a three-year deal when he came from Villanova before the 2017 season and UConn is on the hook for the final year, per the university. There is mitigation, so if Crocker gets a job, his salary will offset the payouts. But, UConn is paying Crocker to not coach the worst defense in the modern era of college football. What a country.

WRONG HIRE, WRONG TIME: Crocker can coach defense. Everything in his career has shown that, including overseeing a top-ranked unit at Villanova. He was supposed to come here to install that defense but it never really got going. The 3-3-5 was supposed to be the perfect counter to spread offenses. It was designed to match up with spread offenses and confuse the quarterback with blitzes and pressure from all angles. All it did was confuse the fanbase, which wondered if the defense was taught two-hand touch instead of tackling.

The Huskies did not have the personnel at linebacker or in the secondary to run this scheme. They ended up running more conventional 4-3 fronts and stopped playing Crocker’s defense long before he was jettisoned. It was a swing and miss by Edsall on bringing in Crocker. Edsall gets credit for developing excellent coordinators in Norries Wilson, Rob Ambrose and Joe Moorhead, who all went on to become head coaches. He also gave Todd Orlando the reins as defensive coordinator and they put up top-30 defenses. Edsall, in our opinion, has proven to know coaching talent. This was a big miss. It was just an odd pairing from Day 1.

SO WHAT HAPPENED? We don’t want to spoil the New Year’s hangover rehashing the stats, so Hearst Connecticut Media has a good account of what happened. The Huskies were just too young and not good enough. There’s a reason the strength coaches were also fired. It wasn’t for lack of trying. UConn started 23 different players on defense and cycled in almost everybody it could.

GOING FORWARD: The job has been posted for the defensive coordinator opening. We don’t know what Edsall is thinking and won’t speculate. Considering it is already on the hook for Crocker’s full contract, it’s hard to believe the school would just blindly go along and hire another on a three-year deal. The school has to stop paying money to people who aren’t coaching and more to people who are actually working. This isn’t Houston, after all. There isn’t any urgency now, but it would be nice for the coaching staff to get back in early January and talk to players before school starts and get back onto the recruiting trail.

Huskies End Slide with Win at Yale

The Story: The men’s hockey team will head into 2019 with a much-needed jolt, ending its seven-game losing streak by beating Yale 3-1 win at Ingalls Rink yesterday afternoon behind goals from Alexander Payusov, Benjamin Freeman and Brian Rigali and 39 saves from Adam Huska. The Huskies had not won since Nov. 13.

HISTORIC FIRST: It was UConn’s first win against Yale in 13 tries, which seems almost unfathomable given the nature of the sport. The teams have played three times in the past year but had otherwise not met since 2014. “[Defenseman] Miles Gendron came up with a slogan for our team: ‘Be The First,’” coach Mike Cavanaugh told reporters afterward. “He wants to be the first UConn team to accomplish a lot of milestones.”

Perhaps most importantly, Yale coach Keith Allain, who led the Bulldogs to the national title in 2013, said he’s open to continuing the series “on a fairly regular basis moving forward.”

MAINTAINING FOCUS: The Huskies were playing without top-line center Jachym Kondelik, who is representing Czech Republic at the IIHF World Junior Championships in Vancouver, but didn’t miss a beat. Although they took only 24 shots compared to the Bulldogs’ 40, they pressed on with 11 shots in the third period and maintained the intensity they showed earlier in the game, which had been an issue.

And, Huska had more than 10 saves in each period, including 16 in the second punctuated by one hell of a stop on Mitchell Smith. Yale’s Anthony Walsh scored his team’s only goal with one second remaining in the second for Huska’s only blemish.

Morning Read

WOMEN READY FOR AAC: The women’s basketball team views its game against No. 8 Baylor on Thursday as a final challenge before the start of conference play. (Hartford Courant)

MULKEY DEMANDS RESPECT: Baylor women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey hopes her team’s fans will show up, be loud and … honor her counterpart. “Geno [Auriemma] is a legend in the game. Pat Summitt came to town, and we gave her a standing ovation when she walked out on the floor. I would hope that our fans would appreciate what he’s done for women’s basketball.” (Waco Tribune-Herald)

AHMED MAKES A DIFFERENCE: Former shortstop Nick Ahmed, who won his first glove this season with the Arizona Diamondbacks, is using his platform to give back to underprivileged communities. (Hartford Courant)