Will the Transfers Pay Off?
The Story: Dan Hurley has a lot of talent returning this season, including preseason Big East player of the year Adama Sanogo, but if the Huskies are going to ascend into the top 15 or higher, it’s the transfers who are going to be the reason they get there.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Hurley hit the transfer portal hard in the spring. The Huskies lost more than half their roster to transfers or the pros and needed to add guards and scoring. The college basketball waiver wire/transfer portal is the way to do it.
• Hurley grabbed four players in the portal in Tristen Newton, Nahiem Alleyne, Hassan Diarra and Joey Calcaterra. What do they all have in common? They are all ball handlers and scorers.
NEW BACKCOURT: The Huskies are going to go with a new backcourt with Newton, from East Carolina, and Alleyne, a 3-point shooter from Virginia Tech, likely to get most of the minutes. Diarra, who comes from Texas A&M, and Newton are point guards. Calcaterra is from San Diego.
• Alleyne is a prolific shooter from who averaged 9.6 points per game and shot nearly 38% for the Hokies last season. At 6-foot-4, he provides length and shot making.
• Newton, at 6-foot-5, is touted as a point guard but is more of a scoring guard than a facilitator. He averaged 17.7 points and 5.3 assists per game for ECU a season ago. He was one of the most-sought players in the transfer portal.
• Diarra and Calcaterra slot in behind those two in the rotation, though Diarra, an athletic and defensive-minded guard, could push to start with Andre Jackson. He’s 6-foot-2, averaged 6.2 points per game and shot 31.9% from 3-point range as a backup in the SEC. Calcaterra, on the other hand, shot 39.1% in four seasons at San Diego and averaged 13.3 points per game in 2020-21.
• Speaking of guards, what will Jackson’s role be when he returns from a broken pinkie? Will he play on the wing in place of Alex Karaban or Samson Johnson and take minutes from Jordan Hawkins? Or will he put his athleticism and court vision to use as a facilitating guard? And what’s Jackson’s profile? Is he a jack-of-all-trades glue guy, or is he one of the more underrated players in the country?
• Johnson and Karaban are locked in a battle to start at the four. Johnson, a 6-foot-10 sophomore, played well in UConn’s lightly attended open scrimmage last night.
SCRIMMAGE RECAP: Speaking of the transfers, since there were no exhibitions this year (Hurley chose to go with secret scrimmages), the Huskies had their first public unveiling last night. What did we learn? Hawkins is going to be really good this year.
Thompson (Finally) Thriving in NHL
The Story: One of the more incredible transformations in the NHL in recent years is that of former UConn standout Tage Thompson, who has emerged as a scoring threat and was rewarded by the Sabres in the offseason with a seven-year, $50 million contract.
WHAT’S HIS STORY? Thompson was second on the Huskies with 14 goals and 18 assists as a freshman in 2015-16 and then had a team-high 19 goals the following season. As the 26th pick in the 2016 draft by the Blues, he was always highly regarded, but he took some time to blossom.
• Thompson left UConn to begin his pro career after his sophomore season and spent the rest of 2016-17 in the AHL. He split the following season between the Blues and their AHL affiliate and scored 11 goals in 71 games.
• He was one of several players and picks sent by the Blues to the Sabres in July 2018 for center Ryan O’Reilly, who spurred the Blues to a win in the Stanley Cup Final and was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the playoffs MVP.
• An underwhelming first season with the Sabres in 2018-19, when he played 65 games, he played in just one during the pandemic-affected 2019-20 season — one in which Thompson had a season-ending shoulder injury. At that point, he was in the fourth percentile in scoring, meaning nearly everyone else in the NHL was producing more offense than he was.
REACHING POTENTIAL: Thompson returned in 2020-21 to play in 38 games, then erupted last season with 38 goals and 30 assists in 78 games and emerged as the Sabres’ top-line center after spending his entire time with the Sabres on the wing. That led to the massive contract — and high expectations.
• Thompson has routinely centered a line with Jeff Skinner and Alex Tuch, which means he has benefited from playing alongside quality teammates more so than he had as a third- or fourth-line winger. His only weakness still appears to be on defense, but top-line players aren’t particularly known for being able to play two ways.
STILL OVERLOOKED: What’s most unfortunate about Thompson’s story is that it has played out in Buffalo, which has been mired in a perpetual rebuild and hasn’t made the playoffs since 2010-11.
• Thompson is still producing at a high rate this season. He had three goals and three assists in an 8-3 win over the Red Wings on Monday, and entering last night’s game against the Penguins had six goals and six assists in nine games.
WHAT DID THOMPSON SAY? “I think the confidence has been there from the start of the season. I think maybe the first few games, I wasn’t getting enough shots, maybe being a little too cute. And I think I just tried to simplify and get pucks to the net, whether it’s a clear lane to the net or not. … If it doesn’t go in, at least it’s creating a rebound and we’re getting possession from it. So, just trying to simplify the game, and from there, you get your offense.”
Morning Reads
• A 60th-minute goal from Georgetown’s Hoyas Panayotou doomed an upset for the men’s soccer team as the No. 17-ranked Hoyas pulled out a 1-0 win in Storrs on the Huskies’ senior night. (UConnHuskies.com)
Top photo: Tristen Newton enters Gampel Pavilion for the “First Night” celebration. (Ian Bethune for The UConn Daily)
