UConn sports

Not sure if it’s time to play Taps for the Huskies’ season. But I know it’s not far from it.

Notre Dame 58, UConn 50. The Huskies avoided scoring a season-low thanks Kemba Walker’s uncontested layup with four seconds to play.

The game was essentially decided after UConn took an 18-8 lead with 8:58 to play in the the first half.

Over that final nine minutes of the half the Huskies scored exactly two points _ making 1-of-9 shots from the floor.

Over the first 9:06 in the second half, the Huskies scored exactly four points _ making 1-of-10 shots from the floor.

So that’s 18:04 with six points on 2-of-19 shooting. Notre Dame scored 28 over that span to turn a 10-point deficit into a 10-point lead.

That was pretty much it. UConn did cut it to five for a second, and to six in the final minute, but was never going to win.

“Fundamentally we were so unsound it was, from a coach’s standpoint, embarrassing,” coach Jim Calhoun said of the game.

– Just in case you thought UConn had cured their turnover woes, think again. The Huskies had 15 against ND after turning it over 22 times against Louisville.

“In a 48-shot game when you turn the ball over 15 times, that’s the equivalent of more than the 22 we had on Sunday,” Calhoun said.

“If you just lost a game by turning the ball over so much, you would think we’d come back and value the ball a lot more,” Calhoun added. “We didn’t.”

Some of the Huskies’ turnovers continue to boggle the mind.

“How do you tell a kid ‘Get a rebound and don’t throw it to the scorer’s table.’ Or ‘Don’t throw it at halfcourt where there are two guys in white jerseys,’ ” Calhoun said. “I must have missed that early lesson in Coaching 101.”

– Notre Dame used almost every second of the shot clock, and made some big shots with the clock running down. G Tory Jackson made a living out of it, and scored 20 of his game-high 22 in the second half.

“They kept griding the shot clock down,” Calhoun said. “We’ve been in that situation before. It hasn’t bothered us any where near as much as it did tonight. Maybe they did a better job with it.”

– Why was the offense so stagnant?

“It was a lack of effort on our part, I think,” said Gavin Edwards said. “We were kind of going through everything half speed.”

G Jerome Dyson was 2-for-14 from the field and had five turnovers, but he was hardly the only one to blame.

“I asked one player who shot a four-foot airball, he said ‘I wasn’t ready to shoot,’ ” Calhoun said. “I have no idea why you’d cut into the lane and not be ready to shoot. But that seemed to be indicative of us tonight. We just didn’t play particularly well.”

– Calhoun used a small lineup with Stanley Robinson at the four for most of the second half. He wasn’t overly thrilled with the performances of Ater Majok, Charles Okwandu and Alex Oriakhi.

“We were getting moved out of the way smaller than us,” Calhoun said. “That’s why I couldn’t play the big guys up front. Quite frankly they were a detriment to us.”

– Robinson’s streak of 35 straight games with at least 10 points came to an end. He scored just six, ending the fifth-longest streak in school history.

“I wasn’t worried about my points,” Robinson said. “I was too worried about the loss. I was trying to get the win.”

- Neill

By Neill Ostrout

STAFF WRITER

SOUTH BEND, Ind. _ That sound you heard echoing across the plains toward the East Coast Wednesday night may have been a bubble bursting.

In what was essentially an NCAA Tournament play-in, the UConn men had hoped to play their A-game. Instead they turned in a D-minus.

Notre Dame, whose postseason resume had been equally as tenuous as the Huskies, came up with a key 58-50 victory at the Joyce Center.

Playing without injured star Luke Harangody for the fifth straight game, Notre Dame (20-10, 9-8) nonetheless managed its third win a row. Tory Jackson had a game-high 22 points for the Fighting Irish.

Kemba Walker led UConn (17-13, 7-10) with 15 points.

Jerome Dyson, who missed nine of his first 10 shots in the game, had 10 points. Gavin Edwards also had 10 for the Huskies.

Stanley Robinson’s streak of scoring in double figures for 35 straight games, the fifth longest such streak in UConn history, came to an end.

UConn’s offense produced points at an anemic rate. Those who thought the 48-point output in a loss to Cincinnati Feb. 13 was the Huskies at their worst were right _ but only by a hair.

For an 18-minute span _ the final nine minutes of the first half and the first nine in the second half _ the Huskies scored a mere eight points. Notre Dame meanwhile netted 28, turning a 10-point deficit into a 10-point lead.

The Huskies were ahead by 10 in the early going but just three at halftime. And when Notre Dame scored the first seven points in the second half, it took a 24-20 lead.

The Irish extended their advantage out to 11 on a Jackson 3-pointer that just beat the shot clock with 10 minutes to go in the game.

UConn cut the lead to five on a Dyson jumper with 7:44 to play that made it 37-32, but Notre Dame responded with six straight points to quickly pull away by double digits again.

The first half didn’t look like it featured two teams desperate for a shot at the postseason, at least from an offensive standpoint.

The Huskies led 20-17 at the break, scoring more than half their points in a three-minute span midway through the half. UConn had just four points, on two field goals, over the final nine minutes and 55 seconds of the half.

Luckily for UConn, the Irish weren’t any better. Notre Dame made only eight of its 34 shots (23.5 percent) in the first half, including a 1-for-11 effort from beyond the 3-point arc.

First to 50 wins? How about 40? Sure looks that way.

Halftime at the Joyce Center and it’s 20-17 UConn.

A 12-0 run early in the game, which included two Kemba Walker 3-pointers and a rare Ater Majok field goal, put UConn up 16-6.

But the Irish, who made just three of their first 16 shots from the floor, eventually found a way to generate some points (a few steals at Jerome Dyson’s expense helped) and have made a game of it.

Dyson is 1-of-6 from the floor with two turnovers.

Notre Dame, which averages 8 3-pointers made a game, missed on its first eight attempts and has just one.

- Neill

We’re waiting for UConn-ND to tipoff here at the Joyce Center but until it does, let’s look at the Huskies’ NCAA chances before the game.

ESPN’s self-proclaimed bracketologist and NCAA Tournament expert Joe Lunardi spent some time with other members of the media on a conference call Wednesday afternoon.

Here’s a sampling of what he said:

– FYI, right now Lunardi has the Huskies “in” the field as a 12-seed.

“I think at the end of the day they will just sneak in,” Lunardi said.

– Lunardi doesn’t think tonight’s game is a must-win, though it’s close.

“I still think they need three wins, however they get them,” Lunardi said. “If they lose tonight, that just means they have to go deeper in New York.

“The arithmitic for them is very simple,” Lunardi continued. “They need more wins. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

– If UConn loses (or if Notre Dame loses, for that matter) it would seemingly be difficult to be the ninth Big East team in the field of 65. Lunardi doesn’t exactly see it that way.

“I don’t think the hurdle is being the ninth league team,” Lunardi said. “I really think the committee would take nine if nine belonged. If it was nine of the best 34 available.”

“I thought when UConn was 4-8 (in league play) that they needed five more wins the way I looked at it. It wasn’t because that got them to 20, it just seemed to be the right number,” Lunardi said. “However they got those wins in a combination of regular season and Big East tournament games.”

– The Louisville loss was obviously a bad one for the Huskies. Still, Lunardi isn’t that high on Louisville, either, though he believes they are in the tourney.

“If they played Louisville best-of-7 on a neutral court, I think somehow both teams would find a way to lose four games before the series was over,” Lunardi joked. “That’s just how they strike me.”

“I think Louisville will be in as well. I’m not confident in either team’s ability to get to the second weekend,” Lunardi said.

– So is Notre Dame in?

“I’d like to postpone my answer until eight or nine hours from now,” Lunardi replied.

– Count Lunardi among those not in favor of the expansion of the tournament to 96 teams.

“There’s no good basketball reason to do it, to expand. At least to expand dramatically,” Lunardi said. “No team with a realistic chance to win the national championship is being excluded.”

And how would predicting a 96-team field be for the world’s premier bracketologist?

“It would be a pain-in-the-ass,” Lunardi said.

- Neill