The Connecticut Huskies kept their slim NCAA Tournament hopes alive on Saturday, taking care of business against the host Rutgers Scarlet Knights, 76-58.
The game was an absolute must-win for the Huskies, who couldn’t afford to drop a game to the struggling Knights following their shocking upset victory over Villanova earlier in the week.
Jerome Dyson led the way with 20 points, and backcourt mate Kemba Walker added 16 for UConn.
The win sets up a showdown with 8th-ranked West Virginia tonight, giving the Huskies another chance to impress the Selection Committee. At 16-11 and 6-8 in the Big East, this might also be a must-win game. Even with wins against Louisville, Notre Dame and South Florida to close out the season, a 19-12 record and .500 in the conference (if it loses tonight) might not be enough to get UConn in the Dance unless it makes a deep run in the Big East tournament.
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 10:21 am by Raj Sethi
Two days after UConn suffered one of the most “embarrassing” losses in Jim Calhoun’s 20+ years as head coach to Cincinnati, the Huskies came thundering back on the road against Villanova on Monday.
Junior guard Kemba Walker scored 29 points to lead the struggling Huskies to an 84-75 upset over the third-ranked Wildcats, which has dramatically revived the Huskies’ chance of qualifying for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament in a few weeks.
The Huskies scrapped together for their first true road win of the season, boosted largely by Walker’s offense and Jerome Dyson’s defense on Nova’s Scottie Reynolds. Reynolds, the probable favorite for Big East Player of the Year, only scored four points in the second half thanks to Dyson’s tough D, and Scottie missed all three of his three-point attempts.
“Jerome Dyson did a sensational job on Reynolds and had some help,” Calhoun said. “I told him ‘If you stop him, we’ll win the game.”
The Huskies held an one-point advantage over ‘Nova going into halftime, and stretched the lead to a comfortable 6-8 points for the entirety of the second half. Unlike some of their other games earlier in the season, where they would open a double-digit lead only to choke it away, the Huskies managed to score their biggest win of the season.
“I told them let’s start from the jump. That’s what we did,” said Walker. “We put together a 40-minute game. Probably the first one of the season, to tell you the truth. It was great.”
“We put ourselves in a position like this all the time and we don’t finish out the game,” said Dyson, who had 15 points and six assists. “We really stayed connected with each other out there on the floor. We didn’t force anything. It didn’t seem like in past games we turned the ball over as much.”
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 11:13 pm by bryan
