The UConn men's basketball team was outplayed by Seton Hall on Wednesday night, leading to an 'embarrassing' road loss to begin the Big East season.
NEWARK, N.J. — After the UConn men lost to Seton Hall last year, Andre Jackson Jr. wasn’t having it.
The junior leader and team captain took it out on the locker room, sending a message to the whole program that set the tone for the rest of the season. That loss was UConn’s fifth in six games. Head coach Dan Hurley and associate Kimani Young were each watching from home with Covid, and after the second-half collapse and the last-second tip-in, the word used by Tristen Newton and others was “heartbroken.” UConn was up 14 at the half and held onto a lead for 39 minutes and 20 seconds before losing.
The word on Wednesday, after trailing at halftime for just the second time this year and holding a lead for just 14 and a half minutes before a 75-60 loss, was a bit different.
There was a real sense of embarrassment, Hurley even said he felt “shame” and was having a hard time looking reporters in the eye as they asked questions after the game. In a conference opener, the reigning national champions, ranked No. 5 after an impressive start in the nonconference, came out flat. And stayed that way.
Donovan Clingan sprains ankle, UConn stunned in Big East opener at Seton Hall, 75-60
After the Huskies got out to a 20-10 lead, which Hurley referred to as “fools’ gold” because of how ugly the game was to that point, Seton Hall responded with a 6-0 run and then Kadary Richmond, who seems to always star against UConn, scored seven consecutive points to give The Hall its first lead. Scoring easily at the rim or drawing fouls, winning on the glass and disrupting almost everything at the defensive end, Seton Hall never gave up the lead and grew it to as many as 19 with a minute left.
Sophomore Donovan Clingan, with a boot on his right foot after spraining his ankle early in the second half, spoke up in the locker room after the game. Without Jackson, the burden of leadership falls on him and Alex Karaban, two freshmen on last year’s national championship team.
“Really at the end of the day, I have to be better as a leader. Donovan said some stuff, but he has to be better as a leader. We all just have to be better as leaders,” Karaban said. “We did have Andre in that role last year and I think that was critical for us. … I feel like I have to do that.”
Newton, the fifth-year point guard, usually lets his game do most of his talking. He, too, recognized a need to step up.
“Donovan and Cam (Spencer), they’re very loud and aggressive with their speaking. We need more of that from other guys, especially myself, AK, just the older guys who were on the team last year,” Newton said. “Those two right now are really doing the most speaking but we’ve got to have people join them.”
There were a number of lessons learned last season, during the brutal month of January and the 5-5 record in conference games on the road. Wednesday was UConn’s first double-digit loss to a Big East team since it lost by 11 to St. John’s at home on Jan. 15, the game before losing at Seton Hall last year. The sky didn’t fall then and it hasn’t yet.
UConn (10-2) welcomes the Red Storm, now coached by Hall of Famer Rick Pitino, back to the XL Center on Saturday.
“We went through a brutal stretch in January last year and then ran through the tournament,” Hurley said. “There are 19 more of these to go but if you realistically are trying to win the regular-season Big East, if that’s one of your goals, your program can’t show up like this and perform in a place where, I think coming into the game we felt like, based on how the season’s played out to this point, we felt like we had a good chance of winning.”
“It’s definitely gonna be a learning experience for us, we’re gonna watch the film, we’re gonna be kicking ourselves these next days just from how bad that we played,” Karaban said. “But I think we’re gonna learn from it, I think everybody’s gonna learn something that they did wrong, just use it into our next game.”
Seton Hall guard Al-Amir Dawes (2) attempts a shot while defended by UConn guard Stephon Castle (5) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Newark, N.J., Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. Seton Hall won, 75-60. (AP Photo/Peter K. Afriyie)
Never able to claw back
The only success UConn’s offense had seemed to come with the ball in Clingan’s hands in the low post. Once he went out, the turnovers, the fouls and the missed rebound chances lost the Huskies the game.
“They didn’t have many answers for Donovan, he had 14 points in 13 and a half minutes and we would’ve kept throwing it in there. It just settles the game down,” Hurley said. “We’re not a team filled with great one-on-one players so the movement, the timing. (Losing Clingan) not only hurt us from a low-post scoring perspective to kind of settle the game down and throw it in, it kind of demoralizes the opponent when they can’t stop the big. But he’s also too, in a lot of the things that we run, he’s a really good passer at the top of the key when people are switching and we’re looking for slips and things so it hurt us.
“And then obviously it killed our rim defense too because we were pathetic at the rim.”
The defensive stops never came as Seton Hall scored on 64.5% of its possessions in the second half to UConn’s 44%.
“Every time we wanted to make a comeback or make a run, even in the nonconference slate, we had always made our runs off of defense and transition points,” Karaban said. “I don’t think we ever had the toughness to get a defensive stop, which limited us on the offensive end. I think really, everything starts with defensive rebounding.”
UConn had several opportunities but was outrebounded on the defensive glass, 18-14. The Huskies had 19 offensive rebounds, though a many came from a series of misses on one possession – six came on the first possession of the second half before Clingan finally ended the series of misses. Clingan finished with seven rebounds and a block before exiting.
“Nobody played well. I coached bad, I prepared the team bad, our scout prep was bad. And I think literally everybody on the team, minus Donovan offensively there, had a bad performance,” Hurley said. “And you have embarrassing losses like this on the road when that happens.”