Thursday night behind double-doubles from Tina Charles and Brittany Hunter, the UCONN Lady Huskies easily took care of the Colgate Raiders 81-37. Tina Charles had 18 pts and 17 rebounds while Brittany Hunter added 12 pts and 10 rebounds. The Huskies move 2-0 on the young season and will now embark on a 7 day 6 night trip to Italy.

Tonight was my first real look at the Huskies. I will honestly say things are clicking on all cylinders for them right now. It didn’t really matter who they had on the floor because it seemed like most of their shots were going down. Colgate was tremendously overmatched in this one as well as they could not compete with the Huskies speed and height. It was also nice to see other players besides Mel Thomas and Renee Montgomery have to lead the Huskies offense although Thomas had 15 pts and Montgomery added 12 to the cause.
Notes and Observations:

• Tonight’s starters were Thomas, Montgomery, Greene, Charles and Houston.
• Tina Charles actually had a double-double in the first half with 15 pts and 11 rebounds before finishing with 18 and 17 respectively.
• It was nice to see Brittany Hunter have a great game. She has been bothered by a troublesome right knee but that was not evident tonight. She was able to run the floor like normal and was able to jump for rebounds. It will be interesting to see if her knee swelled up after the game tonight and how it will react on the long flight over to Italy.
• Kaili McClaren was benched for most of the game because she did not have the enthusiasm that is expected during the pregame warm-ups. I am sure you won’t see this happen again from any of the Lady Huskies again.
• Although Charde Houston finished with 10 pts, she didn’t show the stuff she had in the first game. She was limited to 8 minutes in the first half due to foul trouble again.
• The Huskies defense held the Raiders to 20.9% shooting for the game. From what I saw the Huskies defense was very active tonight. They did spend most of the game in a zone.
• They also held one of Colgate’s best players, Caitlin Gillard, to just one point.
• Free throw shooting is still a concern for the Huskies as they shot just 57.1% for the game. This number will need to improve drastically before the Big East part of the schedule starts up.
• 20 pts from the bench is a drastic improvement over last game and this trend should continue as the season goes forward.
• All of the Huskies players saw action in the game.
• Coach Geno Auriemma is now 9 wins away from 600 in his career.

After a 7 day 6 night exhibition tour in Italy, the Lady Huskies will return to action on November 28th vs Boston University at 7:30 PM at Gampel Pavillion.

Hispanic College Fund Tournament vs Central Arkansas at the Hartford CC 8:00 PM

As featured on Sunday’s here at Random Thoughts, I usually update what the former players did in the week’s previous NBA games. This week, I will be adding on one category (minutes played) so you can see if they are getting significant playing time.

Lately, I had been getting questions on the whereabouts of certain former UCONN men’s basketball players. So I did some research and this is what i came up with.

• Denham Brown, who was the last cut for the Seattle Supersonics, was drafted in the 1st round of the NBA Developmental League by the Tulsa 66ers. It is known yet whether or not he will play there or look to join other UCONN players overseas.
• Khalid El-Amin is now playing over in Ukraine. He was the two time player of the year in the Turkish League before going to Ukraine.
• Rashad Anderson is playing in Greece for Egaleo AO.
• Kevin Freeman is now playing in China for the Zhejiang Wanma Cyclones. He had spent last season in the Israeli League.
• Ed Nelson, who was signed as a free agent and subsequently cut by the St. Louis Rams of the NFL, is playing in the Finnish League for Korihait Uusilaupunki.
• Scott Burrell, who spent 8 seasons in the NBA winning a championship with the Chicago Bulls, is now playing in Japan for the Hitachi Sunrockers.
• Gilad Katz, who played professionally in Israel and in Germany, is now the head coach for Maccabi Rishon Le-Zion in Israel.
• Justin Brown, who played last season in China, is back in his native Australia playing for the Perth Wildcats.
• Taliek Brown, who played last season in Turkey with Karsiyaka, is playing this season in Bulgaria for PBC Lukoil Akademik Sophia.
• Uri Cohen-Mintz, who played last season in France for Chalon, is now playing in Israel for Gliboa/Alfula/Migdal Haemek.
• Albert Mouring, who played last season in Finland for Pyrinto, is now playing in Bahrain for Al Manama.
• Tony Robertson is now playing in the Dominican Republic League for Indios de San Francisco.
• Edmund Saunders, who spent last season in the Dominican League, is now playing in Turkey for Beykozspor.

vs Colgate at Gampel Pavilion 7:30 PM

UCONN Athletic Director, Jeff Hathaway announced today that the UCONN men’s basketball game on Friday night vs Central Arkansas will be webcast live on uconnhuskies.com. This will be the first live broadcast of a UCONN sporting event on the web.

This was something I had been thinking about writing. This year, three of the men’s games are not going to be televised. The game this Friday vs Central Arkansas, Dec 3rd vs Texas Southern, and Dec 27th vs Coppin State. Meanwhile on the women’s schedule, all of their games will be broadcast on television.

It’s interesting to me how a major men’s program does not have all of it’s games televised. One would think given the past success of the program and probably the tremendous ad revenue generated by the men’s program that a local television station here in Connecticut wouldn’t pick up the game. The women’s team, on the other hand, has all of the games not picked up nationally broadcast locally on CPTV. Granted CPTV does fundraising to be able to fund the games, but it works for them. They usually end up getting a corporate sponsor to match what they need to produce the game and still collect contributions to match the initial donation. This has worked for them in years past because now all the games for the UCONN women are televised.

The time is now for the local television stations here in Connecticut to step up to the plate and pick up the last two games for the men’s team.

In news from the Big East on Monday, quarterback DJ Hernandez was named co Big East player of the week this week for his effort in this past Saturday’s win over Pittsburgh in double overtime. DJ was 20 for 29 for 164 yards and had 4 touchdown passes. He also rushed for 130 yards. The key stat for DJ was no turnovers. He shared the award with Matt Grothe of South Florida. Donald Brown II was also named to the Big East honor roll for his efforts this weekend. Brown had 205 yards rushing and two touchdowns. He also caught 4 passes for 26 yards and a touchdown.

Also, the game time for the Cincinnati game on November 25th was announced. The game time will be at 12 noon and will be featured as the Big East game of the week on ESPN regional.

On the injury front, it looks as though Terry Caulley’s season and possibly career at UCONN is over as he broke his hand on his only play from scrimmage in the game. He had caught a pass and had his hand bent back essentially breaking it.

On Monday Night the UCONN Lady Huskies led by Mel Thomas and Charde Houston defeated the University of Richmond Spiders 84-50 in front of 12,883 at the Hartford Civic Center. Thomas scored 23 pts and Houston added 20 pts. Two others, Kalana Greene (14 pts) and Renee Montgomery (12 pts) joined Houston and Thomas in double figures.

Notes from the game:

• Mel Thomas’s 5 3 pt field goals tied her career high in a game. It was also the 7th time in her career, she has scored over 20 pts in a game.
• Tina Charles struggled offensively but was a monster on the boards pulling down 9 rebounds.
• Kalana Greene’s 14 pts tied her career high from last season.
• Charde Houston showed she was the player who was picked to be on the all Big East team. As we all know with Charde, the question is can she do it again on Thursday Night against Colgate.
• Brittany Hunter played despite the problems with her troublesome right knee. She had 4 pts, 3 rebounds in 7 minutes of action.
• All 5 of UCONN’s freshman saw their first collegiate action last night.
• The UCONN bench only scored 10 pts last night. This is going to need to change as the season goes on.
• Coach Geno Auriemma is now 10 wins from 600 in his career.