Get Your Dancing Shoes On!
The Story: The men’s basketball team looked every bit like an NCAA Tournament team on Saturday with an 80-62 whitewashing of Marquette. The Huskies have two regular-season games left and are very much looking like they are headed to the Big Dance for the first time in five years.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Huskies’ win over Marquette was the kind of statement game they have been searching for as they finally put it all together. R.J. Cole scored 21 points and James Bouknight had a quiet 24 (those are always the best kind). The Huskies are going to be dangerous down the stretch and are hitting their stride. Bouknight consistently scores 20-plus points a game and Cole has turned it on as of late and finally looks comfortable in his role. The scoring punch allows UConn’s other players, such as Tyrese Martin, Adama Sanogo and Andre Jackson, to blend into the game and not force things. The result is the deep, talented and athletic team we thought UConn would be at the beginning of the year.
ENOUGH FOR THE NCAA TOURNEY? Yes and no. The win was even more impressive after Marquette blew out North Carolina a game prior. The Huskies and Tar Heels are considered to be on the NCAA Tournament bubble. Not anymore. UConn is getting into the NCAA Tournament. Instead of playing their way in, the Huskies, with two regular-season games left and the Big East tournament, can only play themselves out of it now. UConn is 8-2 when it is healthy, with the only two losses coming at Creighton in overtime and at Villanova, and both were top-10 teams at the time. Could the Huskies get knocked out of the NCAAs with three losses? Sure. But that is playing your way out of a tournament, rather than having to impress to get in. UConn’s showed enough. It just has to close the deal.
THE RESUME: Our second favorite email of the week (after the UConn Daily, of course) is the Team Rankings team update. We loved yesterday’s edition. The Huskies shot up to a 92 percent chance to make the NCAA Tournament after Saturday’s win. The Huskies are 36 in the NCAA’s NET Rating and are No. 30 and rising in KenPom’s advanced metrics. The Huskies project as a No. 8, No. 9 or No. 10 seed and there is a chance to do better if they can close out the regular season and do damage in the Big East tourney.
WHAT DID HURLEY SAY? “We’ve come a long way. I don’t think people understand how far we’ve come in three years to this point. Obviously, we’ve got a lot further to go to get it to the level that this place belongs at. … To go into a new league where we were just getting our bearings in the old league and then deal with all the injury stuff and to still be in the position we’re in, these kids deserve so much credit. They’ve done an incredible job. Incredible.”
THREE SEED IN BIG EAST? The Huskies clinched a bye in the Big East tourney with a win and can clinch the No. 3 seed with a win at Seton Hall on Wednesday.
JACKSON SHINES: Jackson is brimming with talent and ability. He’s 6-foot-7 and has long arms and plus athleticism. We knew that coming in. What we didn’t know was how hard he plays and how good his passing and dribbling skills are for his size. Jackson has an excellent feel for the game, looks like a plus defender and had the best game of his career with eight points and eight rebounds. The only thing missing from Jackson’s game is his jump shot. If he works on that in the offseason, he is going to be a major problem for the rest of the Big East.
THE WEEK AHEAD: The Huskies have Seton Hall on Wednesday and Georgetown on Saturday afternoon. There is still work to do.
Buckers Is Good, Pass It On
The Story: Forget calling her Paige Buckets. Freshman phenom Paige Bueckers might need a new nickname after she had a school-record 14 assists in the Huskies’ 97-68 win over Butler on Saturday.
DISH AND SWISH: Bueckers, who is scoring a team-high 20.1 points per game and making 54.7 percent of her shots, didn’t only set a single-game record against the Bulldogs. She also now has 130 assists, which are the most by a freshman in school history. Entering Sunday, she was eighth in the country in assists per game and 28th in scoring. And, between her scoring and her assists, she’s accounting for roughly 39.4 percent of UConn’s scoring this season, which is absurd.
WHO HELD THE RECORDS? Susie Sturman, Laura Lishness and Renee Montgomery all had 13 assists in a game for UConn, and Montgomery and Pam Webber each had 123 assists as freshmen. Bueckers is in no position to set the single-season record for assists because of the pandemic — that’s held by Sue Bird, who had 231 in 2001-02 — but if the Huskies were to play a full season, she’d probably do it. Bird averaged 6.6 assists per game that year and played 35 games. UConn has been playing 38 to 40 games in recent seasons and Bueckers is averaging 6.5 assists per game, putting her on pace for around 250. As for the all-time mark, that’s held by Moriah Jefferson, who had 659 assists, an average of 4.3 a game, from 2012-16. Yeah, that’s doable, especially if Bueckers will be feeding Aaliyah Edwards and Azzi Fudd for the next several years.
WHAT DID GENO SAY? “We certainly have had some freshmen that were pretty darn good with the ball in their hands. A lot of times, maybe they didn’t play enough minutes because we just had so many good players. Or we had so many other players that were good passers that all the assists were spread out. But all that aside, you’ve seen some of the things Paige does with the ball and … if somebody told you she’s a senior, you wouldn’t be surprised. She plays like one. She handles the ball like one. She sees the floor like one.”
WHAT ELSE DID GENO SAY? “For her to be doing that at this young age, in a world today that idolizes scoring, that idolizes the 3-point shot, how the game has been taken over by people who could make threes and people who put up numbers — to have someone that would rather pass it [than] score, that’s truly enjoyable to watch. It’s kind of really old school, to be honest.”
ONE LAST DANCE: The No. 1-ranked Huskies (20-1, 17-0 Big East), the projected overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament as of yesterday afternoon, have pulled their best Andy Dufresne, crawling to freedom through five consecutive road games. They’re back home at Gampel Pavilion for the last time tonight, hosting Marquette in what should be Senior Night (hello, Megan Walker!). UConn beat the Golden Eagles (17-4, 14-3 Big East) 87-58 in Milwaukee three weeks ago and should wrap up yet another undefeated regular season.
Morning Reads
MONTGOMERY BUYS DREAM: It was a remarkable weekend for Renee Montgomery, who became a minority owner of her former team, the Atlanta Dream, and the first former WNBA player to own a stake in a team when the sale was finalized Friday afternoon. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
SPRINGER EYES DEBUT: The Blue Jays are planning to have George Springer make his spring training debut tomorrow when they play the Phillies. (TSN)
NEW ROLE FOR BARNES? Without a proven closer on the roster, the Red Sox are considering turning to Matt Barnes to fill that role this season. (The Athletic)
SAVING FACE: A pair of home runs by Reggie Crawford helped the baseball team claim a 10-7 at Southern Miss yesterday afternoon, giving them a win after they lost the first two in the series. (UConnHuskies.com)
INTO THE SEMIS: Morgan Wabick scored two goals and Danika Pasqua had a goal and two assists as the women’s hockey team, the No. 7 seed in the Hockey East tournament, upset No. 2 seed Boston College 5-1 yesterday in the quarterfinals and will advance to play No. 3 seed Providence on Wednesday. (UConnHuskies.com)
GUTTING IT OUT: Ryan Tverberg‘s power-play goal with 2:16 remaining gave the men’s hockey team the lead in a 4-2 win over Maine on Saturday that followed a 6-4 loss the day before. (The UConn Blog)
EARLY STUMBLE: The men’s soccer team fell 2-0 to Providence at home on Saturday in its Big East opener. (UConnHuskies.com)
LONG FLIGHT HOME: It was a rough day for the softball team, which lost to host Texas 16-2 in 5 innings yesterday to walk away from the Lone Star State Invitational with just two wins in five games. (UConnHuskies.com)
