The UConn men’s basketball team is scarily good — and even better than last year
When the UConn males’s basketball staff performs San Diego
State on Thursday night time in Boston, it will likely be a rematch of
final 12 months’s nationwide championship recreation, which the Huskies gained for the varsity’s
fifth championship.
UConn didn’t simply prevail within the 2023 NCAA Event; the fourth-seeded Huskies dominated. They grew to become the fifth team within the match’s historical past to win all six video games by 10 factors or extra.
San Diego State was sufferer No. 6, dropping 76-59 in
Houston. And now, the Aztecs have a major alternative to achieve some retribution.
There’s just one vital drawback:
UConn is even higher in 2024. Significantly better.
It’s laborious to consider the Huskies may lose three
star gamers to the NBA — Jordan Hawkins, Andre Jackson Jr. and Adama Sanogo,
who was the Ultimate 4’s Most Excellent Participant — and but return to the
match as an improved staff.
The Huge East champions and the No. 1 general seed within the match assault groups with such talent, stability, depth and precision that they give the impression of being able to
competing on the subsequent degree.
San Diego State head coach Brian Dutcher has even
referred to the match as “The UConn Invitational.”
With solely two returning starters from final 12 months’s staff, head coach Dan Hurley has achieved a masterful job reconstructing the Huskies into an excellent stronger unit by efficient recruiting and deft use of the
switch portal.
The 2 most noteworthy additions had been freshman guard Stephon Fortress, the nation’s No.12-rated recruit, and sharpshooting guard Cam Spencer, a switch from Rutgers. Fortress, who might be a lottery decide within the subsequent NBA draft, emerged because the Huge East Freshman of the Yr, and Spencer was chosen as a first-team Huge East performer who’s additionally the second highest-rated offensive player within the nation.
Among the many holdovers from 2023, combo guard
Tristen Newton returned for yet one more season and elevated each
facet of his recreation to change into UConn’s clear chief. He earned Huge East Participant of
the Yr honors and was named a first-team AP All-American, the primary UConn
participant with that distinction since Shabazz Napier in 2014.
One other returning starter, ahead Alex Karaban,
had a quietly efficient season as maybe UConn’s most unsung participant. After which
there’s Donovan Clingan, the 7-foot-2 sophomore middle and native favourite from
Bristol, Conn., who got here off the bench a 12 months in the past however has changed Sanogo in
the beginning lineup.
Clingan, a projected top-5 draft decide if he
decides to depart, has been probably the most inimitable power within the match. His
14-point, 14-rebound, eight-block efficiency towards Northwestern notified UConn’s future opponents that anybody who challenges Clingan within the
paint, both defensively or offensively, may get overpowered or see their
shot rejected into the third row.
The NCAA Event is UConn’s to lose. However the
great thing about March Insanity is that an upset can occur on any given night time, irrespective of how superior one staff might sound over one other.
There’s little question San Diego State has loads of
incentive to beat UConn, which has now gained eight straight tournaments by
double-figure margins. Perhaps the Huskies’ capturing will go chilly, and
Clingan and Newton would possibly get into foul bother early, giving the Aztecs a
probability to satisfy their mission.
However the way in which defending champion UConn is taking part in,
San Diego State has a significantly better shot at an ethical victory — dropping by fewer
than 10 factors — than an precise berth within the Elite Eight.