Dan Hurley made the short walk from his team’s hotel to the entrance of the XL Center and it was like walking back in time. Restaurants were full, fans in the window banging on the glass.
The capital city was ablaze for a UConn men’s basketball game, the old Big East electricity back in the Hartford air.
“Just to see the city buzzing, it was pretty neat,” Hurley said.
During the AAC years, Jim Calhoun began to worry that UConn games in Hartford were no longer “events.” That is no longer a concern, with the Huskies in the new Big East, undefeated, ranked No. 2 in the polls — they probably should be No. 1 — and Villanova generating the first of what is expected to be a string of XL sellouts.
That means excitement, and it means pressure, and it means that every team that crosses the Huskies’ path brings not only its ‘A’ game, but probably the best effort it will bring all year. The size of the targets on the Huskies’ back is growing, but they staved off the Wildcats 74-66 on Wednesday night because the size of the chip on their shoulder is not shrinking.
“Pressure is being 6-8,” Hurley said, literally laughing at pressure. “There’s no pressure on us. We’re good. I mean, we’ve got a good team. We’ve won our first 14, we’ve got a lot of confidence in what we do. We’ve also got reminders. We’re taking the confidence from the 14-0 start, but not the complacency from it because there are posters all over our facility of where we were picked in the preseason coaches poll, and the preseason top 25 rankings. These guys know that this team wasn’t ordained from the start and we’re earning every single things that we get.”
The Huskies, who were picked fourth in the conference’s preseason poll, behind Creighton, Villanova and Xavier, and relegated to others receiving votes in the AP’s Top 25 before a game was played, had to earn this one. They have had to earn the last three, against Butler, Georgetown and the Wildcats. The breezy, double-digit wins have slowed, the games without trailing in the second half have for the moment ended.
“We’re UConn, so every team is going to bring their best for us,” said Jordan Hawkins, who scored 22 points. “We’re always going to have a target on our back. That’s the history we have, because we’ve been so successful in the past. We always knew we had that target on our back and we enjoy it.”
UConn is into the grind now, and teams are on to how hard they will have to chase loose balls and scrap and are ready to offer battle. Villanova, with its deceptive 7-6 record, healthier than it was earlier in the season, did just that before the 15,564 in Hartford.
“They really made it a tough, nasty game,” Villanova coach Kyle Neptune said. “I was proud of the way our guys battled, but it just wasn’t enough.”
What is happening is no mystery. Hurley had a core of standout players returning, with well-prepared freshmen ready to contribute from day one, and he complemented them with wisely-chosen transfers. He now has a deep rotation and it’s almost impossible to imagine everyone having a bad night, or any opponent taking everything away.
So Villanova clogged the lane and stopped Adama Sanogo and Donovan Clingan from dominating the game, and UConn got its points from Hawkins (22) and Alex Karaban (15). So UConn didn’t have a great shooting night? Backup point guard Hassan Diarra came off the bench and added to the disruption on defense, getting four steals in the second half, the team had nine.
There was a loss of composure in the first half, Andre Jackson, reacting to teams not taking him seriously as a shooter, drawing a technical foul for the second game in a row and Sanogo, frustrated over a call, nearly crossing a line, too. That shouldn’t happen, of course. UConn shouldn’t have been the team losing its cool on a night like this, but then the Huskies reflect their coach’s well-known, finger-in-the-chest Jersey edge. You remember what happened the last time the Wildcats were in Hartford. At least this time Hurley managed to pitch the complete game, and witness the win. The Huskies gathered themselves and fought off Villanova’s challenge in the second half; Sanogo and Jackson made the two biggest baskets down the stretch.
With Emeka Okafor, with his family in the front row, playing the part of coolest Dad on earth, the Huskies made it to 14-0 and 3-0 in conference play for the first time since his team, the 2003-04 champions.
Now, as the holidays pass, it’s time to settle in for the gray, grueling months of January and February. Get used to it. The Big East may have only one other ranked team, Xavier, where the Huskies will play as visitors on New Year’s Eve, but every team but two is in the top 100 in the NetRankings. In each of these next 17 games, the Huskies will face a team as ready to scrap as they are, each believing it has the game plan to win. That’s what comes with being this good.
And yet the Huskies will still be imagining doubters, even as the last of the real ones disappear. Since voters tend not to drop a team unless it loses, the Huskies will probably stay at No. 2 until someone knocks off Purdue. Meantime, the wins pile up, the pressure increases, but the attitude must remain the same.
“That’s always in the back of our minds,” Hawkins said. “We still have more to prove. We still haven’t played a complete, 40-minute game yet. People are going to see what we have.”
