UConn’s “ugly” turnover issues must be kept in check in order for Huskies to survive St. John’s

As UConn works to limit its turnovers through Big East stretch drive, Silas Demary, Jr. seeks to improve off seven miscues against Villanova last Saturday and nine giveaways against St. John’s, who Huskies host in Hartford Wednesday. (Photo by Bill Streicher/Imagn Images)

PHILADELPHIA — At 25-3 and ranked sixth in the country, not much has gone wrong for the University of Connecticut this season.

One of the few vulnerabilities among this year’s Huskies, however, has been an inability to secure the basketball at times in games, either through rebounding or turnovers.

The latter was revisited Saturday, when even in a 73-63 win over Villanova, UConn registered 14 giveaways, a higher number than head coach Dan Hurley would have preferred as his team dominated the Wildcats in the second half, leading by as many as 21 points before a late Villanova rally trimmed the deficit.

“When we didn’t turn the ball over, we played elite-level defense,” Hurley admitted. “We were pretty sharp on offense when we got shots on goal. Obviously, the turnover situation reared its ugly head. At halftime, we were up two, I think we shot 57 percent at the half or something crazy, but we had like, eight or nine turnovers.”

Many of the Huskies’ miscues have come by way of the live-ball variety, unforced errors that are simply created in the wrong place at the wrong time. The 14 turnovers against Villanova were the highest total forced against UConn since St. John’s recorded 15 takeaways in its 81-72 win at Madison Square Garden on February 6. Coincidentally, the Red Storm is next up on UConn’s schedule, making the trek to Hartford for perhaps the most anticipated game of the season in the Big East given the first result between the two just over two weeks ago.

St. John’s forces 14 turnovers per game on average against its opposition this season, a number that drops slightly to just over 13 per contest in conference play. While the Red Storm’s vigorous ball pressure has a lot to do with the aggressiveness teams face against the Johnnies, there is also a mental component attached to the challenge as well.

“I don’t think that we turned it over because of their pressure,” Hurley said the night of the loss to St. John’s. “I think we turned it over because we lost our fucking mind a little bit, and they have great defense. That’s a Top 20 defense, easy. They’re hard to beat.”

Wednesday’s clash against St. John’s will be a chance for Silas Demary, Jr. to redeem himself and slay the proverbial dragon that is Rick Pitino’s defense, a unit that ranks 15th-best in the nation per KenPom and third-most efficient in the Big East, trailing only UConn and Seton Hall. Against the Red Storm earlier this month, Demary committed nine of UConn’s 15 turnovers, and was rendered into ten giveaways last season against the Johnnies while at Georgia.

The junior point guard comes into the matchup on the heels of a seven-turnover night against Villanova, which underscores the importance of handling the basketball. However, five of those seven miscues came in the first half, giving credence to improvement on the fly and prompting his coach to cite the cleanup down the stretch.

“I just think they’re so avoidable for him,” Hurley said. “They’re a little bit casual. Every dribble that you take as a guard, you’ve gotta change angles, you’ve gotta change the cadence of your dribble, you’ve gotta change speeds. Some of his turnovers come when he’s gotta try to get the ball to a spot and spray it to someone coming off a screen. He’s gotta get better at that. The best players, you watch an NBA game, they don’t turn the ball over. They get shots every time down the court.”

Although Hurley has abstained from further comparisons to his past teams after admitting earlier in the season that drawing those parallels would ultimately do this year’s outfit no good, there is a connection to be made to the 2022-23 UConn team that won the first of the program’s two most recent national championships. That Husky unit picked up the pieces after a rough month of January, losing only twice more by a grand total of just five points after January 25 before dominating the NCAA Tournament. The ceiling for this roster is still undefined, but Hurley knows the one factor that could stunt any further growth before March, and is cognizant of doing whatever is in his power to neutralize it before it gets too late.

“It would suck if this team doesn’t get to its potential because we just turn the ball over too much,” he said. “We do all types of things in practice to try to fix it.”