HARTFORD, Conn. — The sliding UConn men’s basketball team needed a win on Sunday. Badly.
And the Huskies got it in the best way possible.
It was the team that started the season 14-0 and rose to No. 2 in the country which showed up in front of a decent crowd at the XL Center, not the Huskies who had just lost five of six. Pure domination was on display in every aspect of the game as UConn sprinted out to a 22-point halftime lead and cruised on to a critical, 86-56 win, its second of the season over Butler and first since Jan. 7.
“We needed that badly,” Jordan Hawkins said. “It’s been a tough stretch, but we kept out heads up during it all. We just played our heart out today.”
Hawkins led the way with 20 points on 7-of-14 shooting and six rebounds, while Alex Karaban made 5-of-9 from the field and 3-of-4 from deep to add 15 points and five rebounds. Adama Sanogo posted a double-double with 17 points and 14 rebounds, along with three assists and two blocks. Point guard Tristen Newton set the tone early as he drove aggressively through the lane and drew contact; he finished with 11 points.
Head coach Dan Hurley and associate head coach Kimani Young were back, masked on the sidelines, after testing positive for Covid on Tuesday and missing Wednesday’s game at Seton Hall.
“Obviously (it was) great to be back, just missed being out there with the boys,” Hurley said, noting that wearing the mask brought back jarring memories. “It was just good to see us kind of resemble, at times, the team that we’ve been for a much larger part of the season than for the last couple weeks.”
The Huskies scored 42 points in the paint, 17 off turnovers and 11 on the fast break. UConn outrebounded Butler, 48 to 22, and scored 18 second-chance points.
“It’s been a very long time here, even, since we’ve played that well to start a year. That’s where we just didn’t handle the pressure well that comes with being No. 2 in the country and getting everyone’s best shot, and then we didn’t keep improving,” Hurley said. “But now I think we’re back in a much more comfortable spot where our back’s against the wall, and I think we’re a little bit better when our backs are against the wall.”
UConn’s offense looked comfortable and had momentum in the half-court where even Donovan Clingan looked like a point guard; feeding his roommate and fellow freshman Alex Karaban who made a cut to the basket for an easy layup. That bucket gave the Huskies a 24-13 lead at the 7:26 mark in the first half and forced a Butler timeout.
The run continued for UConn as the Huskies’ defense applied pressure and didn’t allow open shots, forcing the Bulldogs to shoot a mere 32.7% from the field with 16 of their points coming from junior guard Chuck Harris. As UConn found its offensive rhythm with off-ball cuts and extra passes toward the basket, the Huskies stretched their lead to as many as 22 points at halftime.
At the break, UConn had more assists (eight) as a team than Butler had made field goals (six). The rebounding advantage, thanks to nine boards (four offensive) from Sanogo, was a 27 to 11 in the Huskies’ favor.
Still, after watching a lead of as many as 17 points evaporate at Seton Hall the Huskies’ last time out, the celebration certainly didn’t start early.
“Very excited (at halftime) to get the lead and kind of make an impact in the first half, but just staying focused because the coaches did remind us of what happened against Seton Hall, so we wanted to come out with the first punch, unlike what we did on Wednesday,” Karaban said.
Coming out of the gate in the second, the energy hadn’t withered.
A layup from Sanogo landed the first punch for the Huskies but an attempted lob pass from Tristen Newton clanked off the backboard and deflected into a Butler fastbreak. Andre Jackson was faster. He sprinted down and pinned Chuck Harris’ layup attempt against the glass, then dove to the court to secure the 50/50 ball after the ricochet. Hawkins then scored five straight points in a matter of seconds thanks to a steal from Newton and extended the lead to 29 points, 52-23.
“We had a very brutal – obviously I can’t explain the St. John’s game at home, I can’t give you an explanation for what happened that day, it’s a total failure – but the way the schedule set up for us; send us out to Xavier and then you go into Marquette and you go into Providence, three nationally ranked teams. Usually in between those games, you’re playing a bottom team in the league where you could get right,” Hurley said. “And I just think it was the perfect storm, because that’s over now. We won one. And now we cannot wait to get to Gampel on Wednesday where we’ve won a lot of games in a row in front of fans.”
The long-awaited return of Samson Johnson, who hadn’t played since he suffered a foot injury in the season-opener, came with the team up 35 points in the second half. Johnson, a sophomore who averaged 5.1 minutes per game last season, made one shot – a layup in garbage time – grabbed two rebounds and dove to the court for a loose ball.
UConn (16-5, 5-5 Big East) has a tough test awaiting on Wednesday when No. 8 Xavier comes to Storrs. The Musketeers handed UConn its first loss of the season on New Year’s Eve.
“It was a huge win, I felt like this was one of our first games where we put together two halves of basketball and a full 40-minute game,” Karaban said. “Having played this game and having our confidence up going into Wednesday against a Top 10 team is gonna be huge for us.”
