UConn and Xavier trade blows in electric Big East opener

UConn’s Youssouf Singare fights for a loose ball as Huskies and Xavier needed overtime to settle Wednesday’s Big East opener, a seesaw battle Huskies won by five points. (Photo by UConn Men’s Basketball)

By Sam Federman (@Sam_Federman)

HARTFORD, Conn. — The Maui Invitational was less than a month ago, but it feels like it may as well have been a whole different season.

And in many ways, it is.

After saving their non-conference slate with a cathartic Madison Square Garden win over Gonzaga Saturday night, Dan Hurley’s UConn Huskies returned home to the XL Center for the first big game at that building this year. The 15,684 fans that made up the sellout crowd got the energy of a March conference tournament game bottled into a conference opener.

Following a second half where everything was clicking offensively for both sides, the Huskies and Musketeers needed five extra minutes to determine who would move to 1-0, and it was the defending Big East champs that had what it took as UConn defeated Xavier, 94-89, in the first game of the Big East season, adding a fifth straight win since the Lahaina letdown.

“They wore us down,” Xavier head coach Sean Miller said. “Their size and their rebounding and their execution on offense eventually overwhelmed us, but it took a long time for us to break.”

Toledo transfer Dante Maddox, Jr. played his best game in a Xavier uniform, knocking down tough shot after tough shot in the second half. His first three tied the game at 41, and his second tied the game at 48. Every time the crowd stood up trying to will the Huskies to a stop, Maddox would silence the masses with a huge shot.

And it wasn’t like UConn’s offense wasn’t generating easy points. The Huskies gave their fans a lot to cheer about on the offensive end in the second half. In the first, UConn went nearly seven minutes without a score, but in the second, they scored 1.58 points per possession, getting to the line, pounding the offensive glass, and hitting outside shots.

Xavier shot an ungodly 8-for-10 from three in the second half, but Hurley didn’t think there was much his team could’ve done to stop it.

“I didn’t think our three-point defense was that bad,” he said. “It was just a ridiculous display of three-point shooting, off the dribble, sidestep, deep. I mean we made some mistakes, but the shotmaking was almost at an NBA level.”

When the Musketeers pushed their lead out to 69-64, it was UConn’s turn to deliver a punch back. Solo Ball provided the spark. He hit a layup and then a transition three off a steal from Tarris Reed, Jr., forcing Xavier into a timeout and sending the XL Center into another dimension.

“We got quick spurts where they would go back and forth,” Ball said. “And we just had to come back and settle down.”

He may have settled down, but the building did not. Ball hit another three to give the Huskies the lead back at 72-71, which doesn’t come as a surprise to his Husky teammates.

“We do competitive shooting drills, and I just see him rattle off 20 in a row a couple of days ago,” Alex Karaban said. “He’s making big time shots for us, and he’s going to continue to do that.”

Maddox continued to make UConn fans uncomfortable, draining a game-tying three with 36 seconds left, and drawing an off-ball foul with 9 seconds left, going to the line for a one-and-one.

Both teams shot tremendously from the foul line, part of the story of a game where two Big East teams looked ready to step into the conference tournament immediately on energy alone. Maddox sunk both free throws, part of an 18-for-21 night at the line for Xavier, while UConn was 20-for-21.

“This had all the designs of a game you lose at home,” Hurley said, in response to a question about UConn’s free throw shooting.

Reed, who shot 59 percent from the line last year at Michigan, is above 70 percent this season, and made all six of his free throws, a huge key as to why the Huskies were able to pull it out.

Once the game got to overtime, the champions did what champions do. Karaban canned a trey on the first possession, and for the next seven trips, UConn scored on each one.

From here on in, every game has a little more energy injected into it. There are no nights off in the Big East, and as the reigning champions, the Huskies will get every team’s best shot every night. To get Xavier’s best shot on a Wednesday night in Hartford and overcome it all, the opening victory is more than just a quadrant two win in December.

For being just a month and a half into the season, both teams were remarkably poised, executing their scouting reports and playing cohesively, like what you would see much deeper into the year.

If the rest of the Big East season is anything like that, these next few months will be unforgettable.