Halftime of Connecticut-St. Mary’s on Sunday night in the NCAA Tournament’s second round, UConn up one, and if you left your television tuned to TNT during the break, you saw and heard Jay Wright in his sweet spot. He knew the coaches and teams well — the Huskies’ Danny Hurley from all those Big East battles, the Gaels’ Randy Bennett from two recent Villanova-St. Mary’s March Madness matchups. So well that, as he watched UConn’s guards defend St. Mary’s guards for pretty much the full length of the floor, as he watched Bennett allow his guys to drive the ball to the hoops, Wright knew what Bennett and Hurley were doing and why.
So after Seth Davis and Candace Parker weighed in, Ernie Johnson cued Wright for his insight.
“St. Mary’s likes to look really pretty in their halfcourt offense — and here’s where you get into the ego of coaches,” Wright said. “Randy Bennett’s teams always look like they run great offense. Danny Hurley’s saying, ‘You’re not going to look pretty tonight. We’re going to get up in you. We’re not leaving to help anybody. Your guys are going to have to go one-on-one.’ [St. Mary’s is] hanging. We’ll see how long they can do it. That can wear you down, too, and that one-on-one play might be the product of a little fatigue late.”
