Trending Up in the Final Week
The Story: The No. 18 UConn men are starting to heat up as March begins with Saturday’s impressive 95-86 win, capping an impressive week.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Huskies played on CBS at MSG. It fit like a glove as Jordan Hawkins‘ 20 points and a stellar all-around game from Andre Jackson, who had 15 points and five rebounds, lifted the Huskies.
• UConn is almost locked into the No. 4 or No.5 seed in the Big East tournament, which should mean a game against Creighton at 2:30 p.m. That time is sure to draw UConn fans in droves.
• Our favorite part about the win? The Joey Calcaterra sighting. Joey California took the injured Hassan Diarra‘s minutes and scored 15 points on 4-for-6 shooting.
• The bench also provided a lift as Donovan Clingan, who had nine points, six rebounds and five blocks, and Nahiem Alleyne, who had eight points in 19 minutes, are starting to showcase their games.
A SCORING PUNCH: The Huskies have had one of the weirdest seasons on offense that we can remember. How many times has UConn struggled to score points? We swear in all its losses this season, there were periods of offensive futility.
• But UConn’s adjusted offense is ranked No. 7. For that matter, the defense is ranked No. 23, which puts the Huskies in elite company. That’s a major reason why KenPom has the Huskies as the No. 5 team.
• The scoring comes from exactly who you’d expect in Hawkins and Adama Sanogo, the Big East’s preseason player of the year. Sanogo leads the conference with 16.9 points per game and Hawkins is third at 16.6 points per game. Yes, it’s modest, but the Huskies have scoring up and down the lineup when they get solid play from their point guards.
UCONN’S PROGNOSTICATION: UConn is moving up the NCAA tournament brackets as Jerry Palm gave it a No. 3 seed in his latest projections. The Huskies are 7-3 in their last 10 games with the three losses coming by a total of seven points.
• The more we look at the Huskies, their 1-5 stretch at the turn of the year is looking like an aberration and they are starting to trend in the right direction.
UP NEXT: The Huskies play their final regular-season home game Wednesday when they host DePaul in Hartford.
— John Silver
Juhasz, Lopez Senechal Say Goodbye
The Story: The No. 4 UConn women will bid farewell to two players who didn’t start their college years in Storrs but ended up making a significant impact as Dorka Juhasz and Lou Lopez Senechal will be honored tonight for Senior Night versus Xavier at Gampel Pavilion (7 p.m., CBS Sports).
WINDING ROADS: Juhasz, a forward from Pecs, Hungary, played three seasons at Ohio State before she chose to transfer to UConn prior to last season. Lopez Senechal, a guard who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, but considers Grenoble, France, her home, was a four-year star at Fairfield and chose to head upstate in the spring.
• The Huskies wouldn’t be where they are this season without either player. Juhasz is averaging 14.3 points, 10 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game, and Lopez Senechal is putting up 16 points and 3.1 rebounds a game while shooting 44.9 percent from 3-point range — one of the best marks in Division I.
• Juhasz will be honored on Senior Night for the second time, but this one will be different. Her family is traveling in from Hungary, which it couldn’t do a year ago because of pandemic restrictions. It wasn’t until after Juhasz broke a wrist in the NCAA Tournament win over N.C. State that she decided to return for her fifth season.
WHAT ABOUT GRIFFIN? Redshirt junior Aubrey Griffin isn’t going to be honored as part of Senior Night, suggesting that she could return for one more year after she missed all of last season with leg and back injuries.
ABOUT XAVIER: The Musketeers (7-21, 0-19 Big East) haven’t won a game since Dec. 9, when they beat crosstown rival Cincinnati, and will almost certainly go winless in conference for the first time.
• The Huskies laid the wood on Xavier on the road on Jan. 5 when they won 73-37. Griffin had 19 points, Juhasz had 18 points and 17 rebounds and Lopez Senechal had 15 points in that game.
— Zac Boyer
Morning Reads
• Byron Jones, who is UConn’s most recent first-round NFL Draft pick, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that he “can’t run or jump” anymore after he missed all of last season, his eighth, with a torn Achilles. (ESPN)
• The men’s hockey team romped to a 6-1 win at New Hampshire on Saturday behind goals from Ryan Tverberg. (UConnHuskies.com)
• It’s the end of the road for the women’s hockey team, which lost 4-3 at Boston College on Saturday in the quarterfinals of the Hockey East tournament. (UConnHuskies.com)
• The baseball team was still wrapping up its weekend California jaunt late last night as we wrote this, but it beat Cal Poly 11-10 in 10 innings on Friday before losing 4-2 at Cal on Saturday. (UConnHuskies.com)
• It was a dominant weekend for the softball team, which lost to Delaware but beat UNC-Greensboro twice and Indiana yesterday in the UNCG Invitational. (UConnHuskies.com)
• Kate Shaffer had four goals and Susan Lafountain had three as the women’s lacrosse team beat St. Joseph’s 14-7 in a game played Saturday inside the Shenkman Center. (UConnHuskies.com)
• Rudy Gay broke his nose in a collision with teammate Lauri Markkanen in the Jazz’s overtime win over the Thunder on Thursday. (KSLSports.com)
Top photo: Dan Hurley has the Huskies feeling good after they beat St. John’s at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. (Ian Bethune for The UConn Daily)
