Regardless of taking part in at residence in entrance of a pleasant crowd at Gampel Pavilion, UConn basketball wasn’t in a position to come out on prime in one in all its greatest video games of the season. Although the Huskies jumped out to an enormous early lead, it was Large East-leading St. John’s who stormed again and got here away with a hard-fought 68-62 win.
You do not have to look too arduous on the field rating to seek out out what went improper for UConn on this sport. Dan Hurley’s squad turned the ball over 22 instances, resulting in 18 St. John’s factors, whereas the Purple Storm solely gave it away seven instances within the sport. That allowed Rick Pitino and the Johnnies to come back out on prime regardless of capturing simply 40% from the sphere and 4-for-21 from past the arc.
That is the second straight sport the place UConn has struggled to handle the ball after it completed with 25 giveaways in a win over Marquette final Saturday. After the loss on Friday evening, Hurley expressed his displeasure with the miscues and positioned the brunt of the blame on himself, through Adam Zagoria of the New York Instances.
“We’ve been taking part in with fireplace, we had been lucky to win at Marquette with 25 turnovers,” Hurley stated, per Zagoria. “However we’ve been taking part in with fireplace and the 22 turnovers, the 47 within the final two video games is simply actually low degree.
“When you have got 47 turnovers in 2 video games, it makes you are feeling such as you’re a s****y coach.”
UConn’s flaws uncovered in loss to St. John’s
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UConn could not overcome St. John’s regardless of the return of Liam McNeeley, and the turnovers performed an enormous half in that. Giving the ball away 22 instances is a recipe for catastrophe, but it surely speaks to a deeper drawback with this UConn crew.
Whereas that is nonetheless a proficient squad, it’s considerably extra flawed than both of the final two iterations that received the Nationwide Championship. This UConn crew nonetheless fouls manner an excessive amount of, however its guard play is the most important drawback proper now.
Hassan Diarra is a stable start line guard, however he’s a little bit of a combo guard and thrives when he is ready to play away from the ball like he was on final 12 months’s crew. He nonetheless struggles at instances to run the offense for the higher a part of 40 minutes when he’s on the ground, and that results in a number of the sloppiness that harm the Huskies on Friday evening. UConn additionally would not have a backup level guard, so the offense will get very discombobulated when Diarra is off the ground.
Hurley stated on Friday that UConn is not an excellent dribbling crew total, and that performs out if you see the Huskies’ lack of shot creators. Hurley and firm will probably be proficient sufficient to beat most groups, however these issues may hang-out them when March rolls round.