Jeff Adrien had visions of a basketball star in his mind Saturday. That wasn’t a good thing.
When the UConn forward and teammate Stanley Robinson combined on a strange and ill-timed turnover late in Saturday’s game against South Florida, all Adrien could think of was an infamous NCAA blunder.
“It was a Chris Webber play,” Adrien said.
Thankfully, UConn was able to win despite the boo-boo. Teammate Craig Austrie took everyone off the hook with his off the hook play (I know, terrible combo of jargon and slang).
Many watching courtside, including UConn coach Jim Calhoun, didn’t know what happened.
USF’s Jesus Verdejo had just hit a 3-pointer to tie the game with 6.0 seconds left in regulation. Robinson, seeing that many of the USF players were celebrating and maybe not ready to play defense, tried to in-bound the ball quickly and tossed it to Adrien.
Adrien caught the ball but wasn’t sure if was a legitimate pass and whether or not the clock had started. Adrien is UConn’s designated in-bounder, and thought maybe Robinson was just giving him the ball so that he could make an official in-bounds pass.
Adrien turned to the official and tried to get some kind of clarification but simply saw him counting. Adrien thought he was counting out the five seconds allotted for an in-bounds pass, but realized later he was counting out the 10 seconds needed to advance the ball past halfcourt.
“First, I don’t think Stanley was out of bounds,” Adrien said. “I’m looking at the ref and I’m going to step back out. Basically, I’m letting him know. And it looked like he was counting for out of bounds so I just went out.”
As ill-timed as Adrien’s miscue was _ USF got a chance to win the game in regulation, though it didn’t _ UConn center Hasheem Thabeet’s was nearly as bad.
With UConn trailing by four with just under three minutes to play in overtime, Thabeet threw an in-bounds pass that landed near USF coach Stan Heath. It was a painful turnover, but the Huskies also figured out how to overcome.
In the end, it was the ninth straight win for the UConn.
“This is definitely the most satisfying win of the streak right now,” point guard A.J. Price said. “Because of all the miscues we had.”
