STORRS, Conn. — Andre Jackson jumped into the passing lane and ripped the ball from Long Island’s Quion Burns at full speed. Tearing down the court in a footrace with Burns, Jackson went behind his back, sending Burns in the other direction, and landed a two-handed slam that got the Gampel Pavilion crowd going.
The show went on for the No. 5 Huskies as they dominated Long Island, 114-61, in their nonconference finale. It is the sixth time the UConn men went undefeated in the regular season nonconference slate since joining the Big East in 1979-80, the first since starting 12-0 in nonconference play during the 2010-11 national championship season.
Aaron Jones, the Green Bay Packers running back who sat courtside on Saturday, sent out a tweet that read: “Andre Jackson just had the greatest play I’ve ever seen live.”
Jackson’s dunk gave the Huskies a 15-point lead just under seven minutes into the game.
Five minutes later, Jordan Hawkins and Tristen Newton took turns making great passes to Donovan Clingan down low for back-to-back dunks that stretched the lead to 21, 33-12.
“Obviously it’s hard to do historical things in a place with all this history, right? So to be the sixth team that’s been able to get through the nonconference undefeated is a great accomplishment for this group,” head coach Dan Hurley said. “Something they should be proud of, because it’s hard to do historic things at a place like this.”
The 114 points were the most scored by the UConn men since they scored 129 against Morehead State on Dec. 23, 2005.
The Sharks had no answer for the 7-foot-2 behemoth who came off the bench as Clingan scored six straight points in the last minute of the opening half to bring the Huskies into halftime with a 62-27 lead. Clingan surpassed his career high in just nine minutes played where he made each of his first eight shots and tallied 17 at the break.
“Donovan’s field goals, if you do a study on him, his teammates do just such a great job of finding him in the ball screen game, finding him on dribble penetration, he’s getting so much better at posting up and sealing,” Hurley said.
Without a missed shot (10 for 10 from the field) Clingan finished the game with 21 points, 11 rebounds, a pair of blocks and a steal in just 15 minutes.
“The guards were doing a good job of driving to get the ball in the paint, so I just had to get in my position when my man stepped up just for the step-in dunks,” Clingan said. “Just trying to position myself in the best places is important.”
After practice on Friday, Hurley said he wanted to see relentlessness from his group Saturday. With an 80-41 lead, Alex Karaban, who scored a career-high 19 points and added eight rebounds, answered the call when he dove into the Packers All-Pro running back’s courtside seats for an offensive rebound.
“I was really looking forward to this game just to bounce back from — I knew I didn’t play well against Oklahoma State or Florida, so I wanted to bounce back, get my confidence flowing into Big East play, especially next week against Butler,” Karaban said.
Hawkins landed his sixth 3-pointer with just under nine minutes left, surpassing a career high for a single game. He finished with a game-high 22 points on 7-for-11 shooting, 6 of 9 from deep.
The Huskies shot 62.5% from the field and 43.8% from deep. Five different Huskies (Hawkins, Clingan, Sanogo, Karaban and Nahiem Alleyne) scored in double digits.
Turnover margin, an area of weakness that Hurley pointed out Friday, also improved. The Huskies recorded just 12 turnovers and a season-high 29 assists, 12 over team average. Jackson and Newton each led the team with seven assists each.
“Two of the best players for LIU end up a late scratch, which obviously hurt the competitive nature of the game, but I thought our guys just showed a lot of maturity,” Hurley said. “The 29 assists and just the way the ball moved and was shared, on 45 made baskets, 29 assists. Happy with that.”
In transition, after Jackson showed off his athleticism once again by blocking a shot at the rim, Alleyne caught a pass in the corner and made his first 3-pointer of the night to give the Huskies a 102-51 lead with six and a half minutes to play.
It is the first time the UConn men scored more than 100 points since the 2020 season-opener against Central Connecticut State, a 102-75 victory.
UConn, 11-0, will have a six-day break before its Big East schedule begins at Butler on Saturday.
“We’re ready for the Big East challenge, it’s a whole different season, it’s the second season,” Hawkins said. “It’s way tougher than the nonconference games so we always gotta be prepared, every road game is gonna be hard to win. So we just gotta come together collectively, take what we did in the last 11 games and just build on that.”
