UConn sports

In the heat of the moment, UConn coach Jim Calhoun sounded like a man who was about to say “Thanks, but no thanks” to the NIT.

But Calhoun has come around, or realized that he never actually believed what he said. The Huskies (UConn) are in the NIT, getting ready to face some other Huskies (Northeastern).

“Rightly or wrongly _ many times wrongly _ there’s never been a fight I ran away from,” Calhoun said Monday. “There’s never been a time I haven’t tried to stand up and tried to go after it. If you’re a coach, it’s the only way you can maintain any kind of sanity, if that’s possible, that the next time it’s going to be better.”

– Calhoun says tonight’s game and the NIT itself isn’t about changing the past.

“We have a chance now not to erase anything, that’s not the idea. We’ve played some very good basketball this year. And we’ve played some not-so-good basketball this year,” Calhoun said. “This is a chance to get a fresh start and to play well.”

But for some of the Huskies the week is for redemption.

“This is kind of our redemption,” forward Gavin Edwards said. “We’re going to go out and try to win it.”

– The St. John’s game was obviously the low of lows for UConn.

“Absolutely,” Edwards said. “That was one of the worst games I’ve been a part of.”

Said Calhoun: “Do we have to play better? Without question. And if we don’t, my misery at least personally will last a longer time.”

– UConn G Jerome Dyson, as he realizes, has been pretty horrible lately. He’s had 18 points and 16 turnovers in his last three games.

So what does Dyson have to do Tuesday to bounce back?

“I just have to go out and play and stop worrying too much,” Dyson said.

Dyson said he hasn’t been stressing about basketball lately. He didn’t even watch the end of the Big East tournament after the Huskies were bounced.

“No, I haven’t,” Dyson said. “I’ve been playing video games since we got back.”

Apparently Call of Duty and “the new Mario for Wii” are Dyson’s games of choice lately.

Dyson’s statement produced the quote of the night from WTIC’s Joe D’Ambrosio in response.

“Don’t be confused,” he directed at one sportswriter who might not be up to date with pop culture. “Mario Forwee isn’t some French guy!”

– On the coaching contract front, there has been no movement since Calhoun’s announcement that he had decided to sign a new contract.

“My understanding, when I talked to some of you around Christmas, in principle it was done,” Calhoun said. “The reason we announced something that we already knew, was we were getting killed on recruiting trips.

“Nothing drastically has changed. I’m just waiting to get a copy back of a signed contract,”

“Negative” recruiting is sort of part of the business but Calhoun claims he isn’t fond of it.

“Some of the rumors you hear, is it cutthroat? Yeah,” Calhoun said. “But it’s a cutthroat business.”

“Do I like it? No,” Calhoun said. “Do we do it? I hope that no one on our staff has ever done that. That’s not how we recruit.”

– So did the Huskies watch the NCAA Tournament selection show?

“I personally couldn’t watch it,” Edwards said.

How about the NIT selection show?

“No. I just heard about it,” Edwards said.

– Calhoun believes the Huskies missed out on the NCAA’s by “this much.”

“We found out afterwards if we had 19 wins, we would have gone just on strength of schedule alone,” Calhoun said. “But we needed to get those 19 wins and we didn’t get them.”

The coach has no regrets about playing a difficult schedule, obviously.

“It was the right schedule for us to play, we just didn’t play it right,” Calhoun said. “We didn’t finish it off the way we should have.”

- Neill

Had the chance to spend a few minutes on the phone with Northeastern coach Bill Coen in advance of his team’s NIT meeting with UConn Tuesday night.

Here’s a quick sampling of his comments:

– UConn may have ended the season on a low note but Coen is wary of what the Nutmeg State’s Huskies can do.

“When they’re playing at the top of their game, they’re capable of beating the Villanovas of the worlds and the Texases,” Coen said. “When they’re playing at that level, there as good as any team in the country. I fully expect coach (Jim) Calhoun will have his team playing at that level.”

– The last time UConn and Northeastern met was in Gampel Pavilion on Dec. 6, 2007. UConn won 69-60 but the game was memorable for two reasons.

First, then-sophomore Matt Janning scored a game-high 29 points for Northeastern in what was a surprisingly competitive game.

Second, UConn coach Jim Calhoun received a pair of technical fouls and after the game referred to one of the officials as incompetent. The latter statement drew a reprimand from the Big East Conference.

Northeastern is obviously a veteran team. Four of the players who started that 2007 game in Storrs will also be in the starting lineup Tuesday in the return.

“We’ll probably have four starters returning from that team,” Coen said. “This is a team that’s kind of played in that environment before. Hopefully that experience will help us.”

– Coen, from his days as an assistant at Boston College to his early days as a head coach at Northeastern (he’s been there four years), is very familiar with UConn. Calhoun, who has kept tabs on his former employer over the years, knows Northeastern too.

“There’s familiarity that goes both ways. They’re familiar with our club, as we are with there’s,” Coen siad. “Of course even if you know what’s coming, you still have to stop it. Jim’s teams have been so great in transition and so great rebounding the ball. Those are hard things to stop.”

– If things had played out differently, Coen may have matched up in this event with his former colleague in Ed Cooley and Fairfield. But the Stags didn’t quite make the NIT field.

“I’m great friends with coach Cooley. He and I worked togther for 10-plus years,” said Coen, who worked with Cooley under Al Skinner at BC and Rhode Island. “I was rooting like crazy for them throughout the season.”

- Neill