By Sam Federman (@Sam_Federman)
STORRS, Conn. — According to KenPom, UConn never had less than a 91.9 percent chance to defeat Georgetown over the course of their 40-minute game.
The Hoyas never led Saturday, only ever tied the game at 3 and 25, but it still came down to the final moments.
You can add another notch on the list of games where the Huskies made it closer than they needed to, but walked away with the win. Alex Karaban made two crucial free throws, finishing with 18 points, 13 coming in the second half, to cement himself as the UConn program’s all-time wins leader. His 116th win as a Husky was a 79-75 Valentine’s Night victory over Georgetown.
Karaban only came down with three rebounds on the night, but his last one, reaching across the lane and snaring Kayvaun Mulready’s missed free throw with one hand, securing the ball and drawing the foul, all but sealed the game. It sent him to the foul line with ten seconds to play, ahead by two, and the career 84 percent foul shooter delivered, like he always does in big moments.
Mulready probably never should have been at the line in the first place, though, as UConn (24-2, 14-1 Big East) gifted Georgetown the possession and chance to tie the game. With Vince Iwuchukwu guarding Karaban inbounding the ball from the sideline, the four other Huskies on the floor couldn’t get open. Karaban, needing to get the ball in, bounced it between Iwuchukwu’s legs, and KJ Lewis picked it up for the Hoyas, entered the frontcourt, and Ed Cooley called timeout.
It’s the latest in a series of struggles for UConn to inbound against pressure in key late-game situations throughout the last two seasons.
“We’ve faced pressure for a while now,” Karaban said. “We practice against it every single day so we see it, we’re prepared for it. We just gotta do a good job of executing it, and for some moments, we did, but towards the end of the game, we definitely didn’t execute what the coaches wanted.”
On the ensuing Georgetown possession, Braylon Mullins got caught a half-step behind Mulready, and fouled him just before he rose to to attempt a three-pointer. With 11 seconds left, it was a little early for a foul-up-three situation, but when Mulready missed the second, it functioned as the Hoyas’ last real opportunity.
The free throws were one of the simple things that Cooley thought his team needs to do better.
“We gotta find a way to do the little things to get us over the hump,” he said. “We’ve gotta make free throws. We missed eight free throws, we lost by four. I thought we had some untimely fouls, just small things in the game.”
UConn can also leave the game thinking it needs to do some of the small things better. The game was only at a one-possession margin when Mulready went to the line because of a four-point play from Lewis, which fouled out Tarris Reed, Jr., on the prior possession.
“You can’t foul him there,” Dan Hurley said. “You just have to have the discipline to not do that. It just sets off a chain of events there. He’s now fouled out of the game, he’s a big screener for us when we’re trying to get the ball in versus pressure. That reared its head today.”
Reed played what was probably his worst game of the season, with just four points and one rebound in 17 minutes of action. Against Georgetown’s big frontcourt, Reed didn’t have a significant physical advantage, so the Huskies didn’t feed the ball into him a ton, instead relying on the outside shot.
UConn took a season-high 64 percent of its shots from beyond the arc, just the third time all season — all within the last five games — that the Huskies have taken at least half of their shots from three.
The three-pointer is how UConn built its lead. Karaban, Mullins, and Solo Ball all made treys within the first 150 seconds of the contest. UConn made seven of its first 13 attempts from three, including four from Ball, who had 16 points in the first half, but then went cold.
From the five-minute mark of the first half to the 11-minute mark of the second half, the Huskies missed 12 consecutive triples. Of course, as it always is, it was Karaban breaking the drought, followed immediately by Ball 30 seconds later to force a Georgetown timeout, quickly extending the lead from six to 12.
Karaban made his biggest shot of the night, a third triple of the second half, with just under three minutes left, giving UConn a seven-point cushion. It’s approximately the 700th time in his career that he’s made a shot like that in that spot.
“All he’s done is won and come up with clutch performances,” Hurley said.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.