UCONN Men Rise Up Against the Rebels

On Sunday night in the championship game of the Hispanic College Fund Classic, the UCONN Huskies defeated the Mississippi Rebels 77-59 behind 23 pts from AJ Price. The game was close in the first half until about the 10 minute mark when AJ Price, Jeff Adrien and Marcus Johnson led the Huskies 13-2 run and then another 11-1 run to end the half up 16 pts. UCONN moves to 4-0 on the young season.

Notes and observations from the game:

• The starters were Price, Dyson, Johnson, Thabeet, and Adrien.
• Jeff Adrien had his 4th consecutive double-double (13 pts and 10 rebounds). He had one double-double all of last season. He also added 3 blocks.
• Hasheem Thabeet blocked another 3 shots tonight. This gives him 23 in 4 games.
• Jerome Dyson rebounded from a poor peformance on Saturday night against Fairfield finishing with 16 pts and tieing AJ Price for a team high 4 assists.
• Curtis Kelly was in the dog house for a while in the first half. He made a few critical errors and Coach Calhoun pulled him. From my vantage point, it looked as though he told Kelly if your not going to play, you can take a seat right here.
• Gavin Edwards looked good in his brief time playing tonight. He was aggressive and made a nice pass for an assist.
• Stanley Robinson, who is suffering from nagging knee injury, scored 7 pts and still looks to be finding his niche with the Huskies.
• Craig Austrie’s play seems to be getting better as the games go on. Even though it was thought he would start, he has accepted his role off the bench.
• AJ Price looked like he had been playing for his three years at UCONN even though this was only his 4th game. His legs are coming around and he hopes to be able to play a full 40 minutes by the team the Big East schedule starts.
• Marcus Johnson played well. He had a quiet 10 points including an acrobatic reverse layup to beat the buzzer at the end of the first half.
• UCONN’s free throw shooting was much improved in the game going 14 for 16 from the line (87.5%)
• Jeff Adrien was named the tournament MVP. Joining him on the All-Tournament team from the Huskies were Hasheem Thabeet, Jerome Dyson and AJ Price.
• Coach Calhoun sent out his “veterans” to accept the championship trophy. Those veterans are sophomores Jeff Adrien, Craig Austrie, Marcus Johnson, and Rob Garrison.

All in all, an excellent weekend for the Huskies. Not only did they win the tournament, but they showed tremendous strides of improvement each game. If you saw the game against Quinnipiac 10 days ago and the game last night, you would be asking yourself did they really play that bad against the Bobcats. What surprised me the most was in the second half when Ole Miss sat back in a 2-3 zone. The Huskies executed their half court offense almost to perfection. This is something that Husky teams in the past have struggled to do. The guards were able to get better dribble-drive penetration and create opportunities for themselves or the big men. Next up for the Huskies is the University of Albany at 5:00 PM on Sunday November 26th at Gampel. This is the same Albany team that gave the Huskies a scare in the first round of the NCAA’s last season.