PORTLAND, Ore. — For the UConn men’s basketball team, the first six games were works of art, passing, shooting clinics that overmatched the competition.
That doesn’t work every night, as competition gets stiffer. The Huskies were due for a rock fight, a game they would have to win with grit. They got one, and got it done in the Phil Knight Invitational semifinals Saturday and wrested the game away from Alabama, 82-67, in a match of top-20 teams at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
UConn, ranked 20th, will play Iowa State, which earlier in the day upset top-ranked North Carolina, for the championship Sunday night at 10 p.m. The UConn women will play Iowa for the championship of their Phil Knight Legacy bracket at 1 p.m., both games in the Moda Center.