If there’s been one constant for the UConn Huskies men’s basketball team this season, it’s been the play of sophomores Shabazz Napier and Jeremy Lamb.
And it was that duo of Napier and Lamb who helped the Huskies to a 73-63 win over the UNC Asheville Bulldogs in the first round of the Battle 4 Atlantis at Imperial Arena at Atlantis in the Bahamas.
The Huskies (5-0) advance to the semifinals tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. where they’ll take on the Central Florida Knights who beat the College of Charleston earlier in the day. UNC Asheville (2-3) will take on the College of Charleston at 7 p.m. in the losers bracket.
Napier and Lamb led all scorers in the game with 23 points each. Napier added seven assists while Lamb pulled down six rebounds. Andre Drummond made the first start of his career and scored nine points while grabbing five boards in 22 minutes. Roscoe Smith shared team-high rebounding honors with Lamb with six to go along with his seven points.
Matt Dickey paced the Bulldogs with 18 points while Jeremy Atkinson added 14 points and led all rebounders in the game with nine. J.P. Primm chipped in with 10 points and had seven assists with Chris Stephenson adding nine points.
UConn got out of the gates quickly in this one as they raced out to a 16-3 lead. The Bulldogs would fight back though as they worked the lead down to eight when Primm hit a jumper with 11:07 to go in the first half.
From there, UConn would keep the lead between 10-14 points before an Alex Oriakhi old fashioned three point play pushed it to 17 points at 34-17 with 4:50 left in the half. The Bulldogs didn’t rollover and wait for their bellies to be rubbed though as they fought back with a 9-0 run to cut UConn’s lead to eight. Napier would send the Huskies into the locker room with a 11 point lead at 39-28 when he nailed a long range three with four seconds left.
The final outcome of this one was never in doubt during the second half.
The Bulldogs would get as close as seven points early in the half but for the most part UConn kept the lead around 10 points to help themselves get to the second round tomorrow.
With three games in three days and the quick turnaround tomorrow, you have wonder how tired Napier and Lamb will be after both playing 39 minutes on Thursday night. If this was later in the season though it might be a problem. After all, they both played five straight games in March. So this is probably nothing for both of them.
The good news for us Huskies fans who didn’t have HDNet and had to resort to other measures to watch the game, tomorrow’s game will be shown on Versus which means most of us can watch it.
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Notes and musings:
UNC Asheville Bulldogs vs UConn Huskies 11.24.11 Battle 4 Atlantis box score
The starters for UConn were Shabazz Napier, Jeremy Lamb, DeAndre Daniels, Tyler Olander and Andre Drummond.
UConn shot 53.2% (25-47) from the floor while the Bulldogs shot 41.1% (23-56).
The Huskies had 16 assists on their 25 made baskets.
UConn was 9-of-22 (40.9%) from three point land while UNC Asheville was 7-of-23 (30.4%).
I was a little happier with the Huskies from the charity stripe. They were 14-of-19 (73.7%).
UConn won the battle of the boards, outrebounding the Bulldogs 34-24.
The Huskies outscored UNC Asheville 27-24 in the paint and 6-4 on the fast break.
UConn had 12 points off of 12 Bulldogs turnovers. UNC Asheville had 17 points off of 19 UConn turnovers.
Both teams had six second chance points.
UNC Asheville never held a lead in the game.
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