UConn sports

Halftime at Gampel Pavilion between DePaul and UConn. It’s 34-27 UConn at this point.

The Huskies were down eight points early but used a late 14-2 run to pull ahead.

Jerome Dyson has eight points to lead the Huskies.

Didn’t think there was a team out there worse from the foul line than UConn? Meet DePaul.

The Blue Demons, who shoot just 56.9 percent from the line for the season, missed all four of their first-half attempts.

- Neill

New hair, new results?

That appears to be what UConn forward Stanley Robinson hopes.

The Huskies, who have lost three in a row and six of their last eight games, need something to spark them. Maybe the 6-foot-9, high-flying Robinson cutting his trademark cornrows for a more aerodynamic look will be the catalyst.

UConn hosts Depaul Saturday night.

– Robinson swears he didn’t lose a bet.

“Not at all,” Robinson said. “I just felt like it was time for me to cut it off. I had a rough stage with that hair so I got tired of it.”

Teammate Jerome Dyson likes the look…sort of.

“He’s been getting a lot of compliments,” Dyson said.

From the players?

“No, not from us,” Dyson said with a laugh.

It wasn’t to try and break any kind of basketball jinx, but I’m sure that’s what Robinson hopes it does.

“I just wanted a more professional look,” Robinson said. “I think it looks better on me.”

– Coach Jim Calhoun remains away from the team on an indefinite leave.

Sticks, though, thinks he has the answer for Calhoun’s return.

“I’m thinking next week,” Robinson said. “I’m thinking Syracuse.”

Robinson then said he may call Calhoun Friday night and let him in on that “secret.”

– DePaul has only one league win this season and recently snapped a record-losing streak in conference play.

The Huskies, however, aren’t putting this game in the win column just yet.

“We can’t look over anybody at this point,” Dyson said. “We’re just trying to take every game the same. We need wins. We just have to focus on one opponent at time.”

– Turnovers (73 in the last four games) continue to be a big issue for the Huskies.

“I’m still concerned about the turnovers. The turnovers continue to be a problem,” associate head coach George Blaney said. “Whether it’s the passer or the catcher, it still seems to be something where we do not value the ball enough.”

Is the guards or the big men who deserve the most blame?

“It’s both of us. We’re throwing some tough passes and some of them are not being caught,” Dyson said. “It’s going both ways.”

– DePaul is a big and strong team according to Blaney.

“They play really good defense. They do trap some, they play a little zone but it’s mostly a man-to-man team,” Blaney said. “It’s very aggressive, up in you pretty good. I think we have to be sharp with our execution.”

– DePaul is making its first-ever trip to Storrs.

UConn is 15-1 against present and former Big East members making their first visit to Gampel Pavilion. Marquette is the only league opponent to win in its Gampel debut.

– UConn leads the all-time series 3-1 and won 71-49 in Chicago.

– Former St. Luke’s star Devin Hill will be back in his home state Saturday. The 6-foot-9 Stamford native is averaging 6.0 points and 3.3 rebounds during this, his sophomore season.

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Just got the official word from UConn. The football team has added defensive backs coach Darrell Perkins and tight ends coach Jon Wholley to its staff.

Perkins comes from Louisiana-Monroe, where as a DB coach he helped the team become statistically the best in the Sun Belt Conference in 2009. Before that he was the defensive coordinator at Charleston Southern in 2007.

“We are very pleased to welcome Darrell to the Connecticut football program,” UConn head coach Randy Edsall said in a statement. “He brings a wide variety of coaching experience to our team _ and all of it has been successful. Darrell has worked in nearly every region of the country and brings a strong reputation with him to UConn.”

Wholley is a 2004 UConn graduate, a former UConn player and an ex-graduate assistant with the program.

“We are very happy to welcome Jon back to the UConn football program,” Edsall said. “He was a tremendously hard worker for us as a student-athlete and graduate assistant coach. Jon is a Connecticut native who knows the state through-and-through and he is a great addition to our staff.”

Most recently Wholley was an assistant football coach at Fordham for the 2009 season where he worked with the running backs and had recently added recruiting coordinator duties. The Rams led the Football Championship Subdivision (Division I-AA) in total offense at 488.82 yards per game.

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A few items from around the Big East via the league’s weekly conference call with its coaches:

– UConn coach Jim Calhoun remains on medical leave. He’s missed five games so far.

Acting head coach/associate head coach George Blaney said Thursday he still doesn’t know when Calhoun will return.

“It’s day-to-day. We’re wating for he and the doctors to decide what is the right time for him to come back,” Blaney said.

“I do talk to him,” Blaney added. “He seems good, he feels good, he’s feeling better. But we don’t have a timetable yet for when he’s coming back.”

It’s not likely to be Saturday against DePaul.

“I’m assuming I’m coaching Saturday,” Blaney said.

The Huskies have lost three in a row and six of their last eight (they’re 2-3 in Calhoun’s absence).

“It’s not that we’re doing a whole lot of different things than we had been doing,” Blaney said. “I do think we miss coach Calhoun greatly. I think the players miss him greatly. They’re used to playing for him.”

– Interim DePaul head coach Tracy Webster, whose team visits Storrs Saturday, on UConn:

“A very big basketball team with two really good guards that create problems for us and for a lot of teams,” Webster said. “We have to do a really good job of trying to control the tempo. They’re really good at running the basketball.”

DePaul, which recently fired head coach Jerry Wainwright and only recently snapped a Big East-record losing streak, is by no means a pushover Blaney says.

“DePaul is playing really, really good basketball lately,” Blaney said. “They’re very athletic, very strong _ physically strong. I’m looking for a very hard game on Saturday. It certainly is a game that both teams need to win.”

– A 96-team NCAA Tournament? At least one league coach thinks it’s a good idea.

“I love it. I just think it’s time as come,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said, pointing out that more and more teams have joined Division I (347 total now) while the tournament has stayed the same size since 1985.

The NCAA is reportedly considering opting out of its television contract with CBS and shopping it around, presumably to the ESPN family of networks.

“What’s best for TV is probably going to happen, and we have to understand that,” Wright said.

Another Big East coach says he’s in favor of expansion, though he’s not sure on the number 96.

“I have not given enough thought to that to answer that question,” Georgetown coach John Thompson III said. “I would like to see the tournament expanded.”

– Before this season South Florida had never won back-to-back Big East games. Now the Bulls have suddenly won four straight.

A 72-64 win over seventh-ranked Georgetown Wednesday night in D.C. has put an exclamation point on the streak.

“Our team is really just starting to believe,” USF coach Stan Heath said Thursday morning, “believe that we can win games.”

Guard Dominique Jones is averaging a staggering 35 points during win streak.

“Dominque Jones just continues to play at such a high, high level,” Heath said. “He’s the straw that stirs the drink for our basketball team.”

South Florida (15-7, 5-5) is even starting to talk about the NCAA Tournament a little bit.

“I believe the kids have to have a carrot in front of them,” Heath said. “It’s something we subtly talk about.”

- Neill

The UConn football team has filled its two coaching vacancies, hiring Darrell Perkins to coach its defensive backs and Jon Wholley to coach tight ends. An official announcement is expected later this afternoon.

Perkins comes to UConn from a two-year stint as the cornerbacks coach and recruiting coordinator at Louisiana-Monroe. He was let go when head coach Charlie Weatherbie was fired after the season.

Perkins, a former running back at Wyoming, has also served as an assistant at Charleston Southern, Northern Colorado, Ferris State and Purdue.

Wholley is a UConn graduate who also served on head coach Randy Edsall’s staff as a graduate assistant. The Southington High product was an assistant at Fordham last season.

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Just wanted to pass along some words from Florida coach Urban Meyer on his newest quarterback signee: Wethersfield High’s Tyler Murphy.

“We feel like Jordan Reed is going to move to tight end and with that, we wanted to look for a dual position player and found that in Tyler Murphy. You watch his highlight film and he’s a freakish athlete with the ball in his hands and he can throw, so that’s how it happened,” Meyer said during a press conference Wednesday.

“We made a decision to make a run at some quarterbacks when we made the decision regarding Jordan Reed,” Meyer added. “Coach (Steve) Addazio actually went to school with Tyler’s father and there was a bit of a relationship there. He knew the high school coach very well, but I didn’t know any of that. We were sitting around watching tapes of about 15 quarterbacks one after another and all of a sudden we got a feel for him as a player. I want to say that was two or three weeks ago.”

UConn recruited Murphy as a defensive back (and it seems Meyer is considering other positions for Murphy, too by calling him a “dual position” player) but not as QB.

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Just leaving Rentschler Field and the signing day press conference with the UConn football team.

Coach Randy Edsall talked about a myriad of things so let’s take a quick glance:

– We knew before Wednesday that Edsall didn’t have much use for the rankings of rivals or scout. He went a bit further with his thoughts Wednesday.

“We know who we’re looking for,” Edsall said. “We know what we want in a young man, not only as a player but also academically, work ethic and character. All these kids fit that bill.”

Rivals had UConn’s class ranked 83 late Wednesday (last in the Big East and with only three BCS schools behind…Wisconsin, Washington State and Indiana).

Scout had the class ranked 72 (last in the Big East and with only two BCS schools behind…Iowa State and Kansas State).

“This is all very stupid in my opinion,” Edsall said. “For anybody to go out and rank classes and try to evaluate thousands and thousands and thousands of kids that are 17 and 18 years old, to think that they’re going to watch all this film and rank them all and put a number on them, it’s propaganda. And it’s one of the things that’s really ruining the game, in my opinion.”

“We’re in this profession to help young people,” Edsall added. “And this process isn’t helping young people, it’s hurting them.”

The coach didn’t stop there.

“You don’t see people going back after four or five years and ranking those recruiting classes,” Edsall said. “It’s not where you are when you come in here, it’s where you end up. Do you end up with a degree? Do you end up as a better player…and a better person? Those are the things that are important.”

– He likes the class’ versatility and athleticism, obviously.

“This is probably the most athletic class that we’ve been able to put together,” Edsall said. “There are a lot of two- and some three-sport athletes in this class, which I really like.”

– The two new assistant coaches (tight ends and defensive backs) will be announced Thursday.

– Apparently the Cincinnati coaches came in late to try and “poach” DT Angelo Pruitt.

And BC made a late push to grab DE B.J. McBryde away.

– Edsall was excited that the new class gets the Huskies pretty close to their “prescribed” number of scholarships for each position. Edsall has numbers in mind for each position and shared them Wednesday.

The number the staff wants is before the position and the actual number they’ll have next year is in parenthesis.

Of the 85 scholarships Edsall wants 41 on offense, 41 on defense, 3 for specialists (punter, kicker, long-snapper).

Also:

15 defensive linemen (15)

8 inside linebackers (7)

4 Husky (Outside) linebackers (3)

7 cornerbacks (8)

7 safeties (7)

16 offensive linemen (15)

4 tight ends (3)

7 running backs (8)

10 wide receivers (10)

4 quarterbacks (5)

“We’re as close to those numbers now as we’ve ever been,” Edsall said.

– DE Mike Cox will graduate and attend grad school somewhere other than UConn. Edsall said is looking at Division I-AA (FCS) schools to play another year of football.

– Reuben Frank will be a fullback, not a defensive end when he arrives at UConn. That’s likely due to Anthony Davis’ departure.

– Edsall also had some strong words for his team’s recruiting efforts in-state.

Edsall didn’t mention anyone by name but it’s clear the Huskies recruited Stamford linebacker Khairi Fortt (Penn State), King Low Heywood Thomas’s running back Silas Redd (Penn State) and Wethersfield quarterback Tyler Murphy (Florida). (It seems the Huskies may have wanted Murphy if he was willing to play another position).

“Penn State doesn’t get every kid they want out of the state of Pennsylvania,” Edsall said. “Florida doesn’t get every kid they want out of the state of Florida. That’s the way it is.”

“The kids from the state of Connecticut who come to UConn have done pretty darn well for themselves,” Edsall said. “I would hope that the young people in this state would take a look at that. And then maybe take a look at the kids that have left the state and what they’ve done compared to those who stayed home.”

Some coaches in Connecticut still don’t treat UConn like a major player, it seems.

“We beat Notre Dame, we beat South Carolina, we have a Big East championship,” Edsall said. “Sometimes it’s tough to break the land of steady habits. It’s tough to break peoples’ habits in terms of what their perception is.”

Edsall took another step:

“We are better received, in my opinion, outside the state of Connecticut than what we are within the state of Connecticut _ in certain pockets,” Edsall said. “That’s tough to say but you have to say it, because it’s true.”

– A few words from the coach on Staten Island RB Lyle McCombs.

“He was a guy that played in a double-wing offense,” Edsall said. “When we watched the film, I just thought he could be a really good I-tailback.

“He’s got shiftiness. He’s got the ability to break the long one. He’s a return guy.”

– A few words from the coach on QB Scott McCummings:

“He’s as mature as anybody I’ve been around,” Edsall said. “He’s a guy that can run as well as throw the ball. He’s a dual guy.

McCummings played for Tom Lamb at Natick (Mass.) High, who was ex-UConn LB Alfred Fincher’s coach at Norwood (Mass.) High.

– UConn’s recruiting of quarterbacks hasn’t changed with the addition of OC Joe Moorhead or his offense, Edsall says.

“The most important ingredient for us with a quarterback is somebody who can throw the football,” Edsall said. “That’s the most important ingredient, somebody who can throw it and who is accurate.”

BY POSITION

Defensive backs _ 5

Offensive linemen _ 4

Linebackers _ 4

Defensive linemen _ 3

Wide receivers _ 2

Running backs _ 2

Quarterbacks _ 2

BY STATE

Florida _ 4

Connecticut _ 3

Massachusetts _ 3

New York _ 2

Georgia _ 2

Pennsylvania _ 2

Maryland _ 2

New Jersey _ 1

New Hampshire _ 1

Ohio _ 1

Illinois _ 1

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UConn’s signing class is in. Everyone we expected with one exception: Offensive tackle Jacob Ruby from Fork Union.

We’ll try to find out what’s going on there but otherwise, here’s the list:

Josh Alexander, LB, 6-3/215, Waldorf, Md.

Ty-Meer Brown, S, 6-1/180, McKeesport, Pa.

Gus Cruz, OL, 6-4/256, Meriden, N.H.

Geremy Davis, WR, 6-2/205, Norcross, Ga.

Reuben Frank, FB, 6-2/230, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Mark Hansson, OT, 6-5/256, Clearwater, Fla.

Byron Jones, CB, 6-0/175, New Britain

Tebucky Jones, WR, 6-0/180, New Britain

Jonathan Louis, DE, 6-5/240, Brockton, Mass.

Taylor Mack, DB, 5-10/170, Atlanta

B.J. McBryde, DE, 6-5/250, Beaver Falls, Pa.

Lyle McCombs, RB, 5-8/175, Staten Island, N.Y.

Scot McCummings, QB, 6-2/210, Natick, Mass.

Greg McKee, OT, 6-5/295, Chicago

Andrew Opoku, DB, 6-4/226, North Brunswick, N.J.

Bryan Paull, C, 6-4/290, Parkland, Fla.

Angelo Pruitt, DL, 6-3/270, Cincinnati

Yawin Smallwood, LB, 6-3/215, Worcester, Mass.

Gilbert Stlouis, CB, 5-11/175, Davie, Fla.

Brandon Steg, LB, 6-3/220, Coral Springs, Fla.

2009 carry overs

Leon Kinnard, QB, 5-9/182, Reistertown, Md.

Mike Osiecki, LB, 6-2/225, Seymour

- Neill