Here is a photo gallery from the game between the UConn Huskies and USF Bulls in the first round of the American Athletic Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament at the XL Center in Hartford, CT. UConn won the game 69-43.
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photo credits: ©2015 Ian Bethune
UConn’s Ryan Boatright (11) congratulates Daniel Hamilton (5) after a made basket in the second half of the first round of the 2015 American Athletic Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament at the XL Center in Hartford, CT.
UConn men’s basketball freshman Daniel Hamilton had an eventful day on Thursday.
In the morning, he was named the American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year. Then in the evening, he led his team in scoring and to a victory.
Behind Hamilton’s 20 points, the UConn Huskies beat the USF Bulls 69-43 in the first round of the American Athletic Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament at the XL Center in Hartford, CT.
The No. 6 seed Huskies advance to the quarterfinals of the tourney to face the No. 3 seed, the Cincinnati Bearcats. The two teams split their two games earlier this season. Tip is scheduled for approximately 9 p.m.
Rodney Purvis added 13 points while Ryan Boatright had 12 points and three assists. Amida Brimah and Omar Calhoun each had nine points with Brimah adding five blocked shots.
Phil Nolan led UConn with a career-high tying seven rebounds.
USF was paced by Nehemias Morillo‘s 13 points. Troy Holston, Jr. was the only member of the Bulls to hit double figures with 12. Ruben Guerrero added seven rebounds to go along with his six points.
Here are UConn’s postgame quotes.
Here are USF’s postgame quotes.
Here are the postgame notes from the American Athletic Conference.
From the Boston Red Sox
BOSTON, MA-The Boston Red Sox today signed infielder Yoan Moncada (yo-AHN mohn-CAH-dah) to a minor league contract.
Executive Vice President/General Manager Ben Cherington made the announcement.
Moncada, 19, batted .277 (84-for-303) with 58 runs, 11 doubles, four triples, four home runs, 28 RBI, 40 walks, and 21 stolen bases in 101 games over two seasons in Cuba’s major league, Serie Nacional. A switch-hitter, he spent both the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons with Elefantes de Cienfuegos, posting a career .388 on-base percentage.
The 6-foot, 215-pound infielder appeared exclusively at second base with Cienfuegos. In 45 games last season, he led the team in total bases (67) and runs scored (32), and tied for the team lead with 13 extra-base hits (7 2B, 3 3B, 3 HR) while batting .273 (45-for-165) with 13 RBI. He helped Cienfuegos to the 2012-13 playoffs.
In addition to his time in Serie Nacional, the native of Abreus, Cienfuegos, Cuba represented the country in various tournaments, most recently the 18U World Championships in Taiwan in September 2013. He also played for Cuba in the World Port Tournament in the Netherlands (July 2013), the 16U World Championships in Mexico in August 2011, and the COPABE Pan American 16U Championship in Mexico in October 2010.
Moncada, who established residency in Guatemala before signing with Boston, will be assigned to Red Sox minor league spring training camp.
After being named American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year, UConn men’s basketball freshman Daniel Hamilton talked about the honor:
HARTFORD, Conn. — UConn freshman Daniel Hamilton (Los Angeles, Calif.) was named the Rookie of the Year and senior Pat Lenehan (Cheshire, Conn.) was named the Scholar-Athlete of the Year as the American Athletic Conference announced its top individual awards for men’s basketball at a press luncheon Thursday.
Daniel Hamilton was named 2015 American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year.
Other awards announced today included SMU junior guard Nic Moore as the league’s Player of the Year and Temple coach Fran Dunphy as the Coach of the Year.
Hamilton, a 6-7 swingman, has started every game this season for the Huskies and has filled the box score with his solid all-around play. He is UConn’s leading rebounder at 7.6 per game and led the entire conference in rebounding in league games at 9.1 per game.
Hamilton is also UConn’s second-leading scorer at 10.8 points per game and is second in assists at 3.6 per game. In conference games, those numbers went up to 11.0 points and 4.0 assists per game. He is among the top 20 in scoring, rebounding and assists in the league.
Hamilton, who was an Honorable Mention All-AAC pick, was named the AAC Rookie of the Week four times during the season. He reached double figures in 17 games, led UConn in rebounding in 17 games and recorded five double-doubles, the most on the team. His season-high 25 points against Memphis on Feb. 19 were the most by a UConn freshman since Jerome Dyson in 2006-07 and his 17-rebound performance against East Carolina on Feb. 25 were the most by a UConn freshman since Corny Thompson in 1978-79.
Hamilton joins a list of UConn players who have won the Rookie of the Year Award that includes Earl Kelley (1982-83), Nadav Henefeld (1989-90), Doron Sheffer (1993-94), Khalid El-Amin (1997-98) and Rudy Gay (2004-05), all in the Big East Conference.
Lenehan, a 6-3 guard, is a former walk-on who earned a UConn scholarship this season. He has maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA as a molecular and cell biology major and intends to pursue a medical career with a specialty in cancer research. A Rhodes Scholar finalist, he has already been accepted to medical school at Harvard, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and UConn.
Lenehan has received some of the highest academic honors UConn can bestow, including the Goldwater Scholarship, the Presidential Scholars Award Scholarship, the UTC Academic Scholarship, and he has been recognized as a Babbidge Scholar.
He is the second UConn player to win a conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year, joining two-time Big East Scholar-Athlete winner Emeka Okafor (2002-03, 2003-04).
Earlier this week, UConn sophomore Amida Brimah was named the AAC Defensive Player of the Year, senior Ryan Boatright was a unanimous first team All-ACC pick, Hamilton was a unanimous pick to the All-Rookie Team and Brimah and Hamilton were Honorable Mention all-league selections.
From the American:
HARTFORD, Conn. – SMU guard Nic Moore, who led the Mustangs to their first regular-season conference championship since 1993, has been chosen as the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year by the league’s 11 head coaches. The announcement was made Thursday by Commissioner Mike Aresco.
UConn guard/forward Daniel Hamilton was chosen by the coaches as The American’s Rookie of the Year, while Temple head coach Fran Dunphy was tabbed as the conference’s Coach of the Year. UConn guard Pat Lenehan accepted the league’s Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year award after he was chosen by the league’s Academic Affairs Committee.
Moore, a junior from Winona Lake, Indiana, was named as a unanimous all-conference selection Tuesday and adds The American’s Player of the Year honors to his impressive list of accomplishments. He enters the postseason ranked fourth in the conference in scoring (14.4 points per game), second in assists (5.3 apg) and eighth in steals (1.4 spg). He is the conference leader in both 3-point shooting (.429) and free throw shooting (.875).
Moore, who was a Wooden Award and Naismith Trophy top-50 watch list selection, has averaged 12.6 points and 4.6 assists per game in his career. Beyond his individual statistics, Moore has led SMU, which is ranked No. 20 in the week’s Associated Press poll, to the outright regular-season conference championship in 2015 and the most conference wins in a two-year span (27) in school history.
Hamilton was chosen as The American’s top newcomer after he averaged 10.8 points, 7.6 rebounds and 3.6 assists in the regular season for the Huskies, emerging as one of the conference’s most versatile players. The Preseason American Rookie of the Year lived up to his billing by starting all 30 games and leading the team in rebounding while ranking second in scoring. He enters the postseason ranked second in The American in rebounding and ninth in assists, finishing the regular season as the only player in the conference’s top 10 in both categories.
Dunphy was chosen by his counterparts as The American Coach of the Year after he engineered a remarkable turnaround for the Owls, who finished 22-9 overall and 13-5 in conference play. Temple, which was 9-22 last season, scored a signature win against then-No. 10 Kansas and surpassed the 20-win mark for the seventh time in nine seasons. He enters postseason play with 499 career wins on a ledger that includes 13 conference championships.
Lenehan, a guard from Cheshire, Connecticut, earned a scholarship this season after spending two years as a walk-on. He was chosen as the Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year after he was named a UConn Babbidge Scholar, a University Scholar, the recipient of the Drotch Scholarship in Biology and the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Lenehan, who holds a 4.0 cumulative grade-point average as a molecular and cell biology major, has been accepted to a number of prestigious medical schools, including those at Harvard, Columbia, Duke and Johns Hopkins.
Complete coverage of the 2015 American Athletic Conference Championship will be available on the conference’s Championship Central page at www.TheAmerican.org/mbb.
2015 American Athletic Conference Player of the Year
Nic Moore, G, SMU
2015 American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year
Daniel Hamilton, G/F, UConn
2015 American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year
Fran Dunphy, Temple
2015 American Athletic Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year
Pat Lenehan, G, UConn
From UConn:
HARTFORD, Conn. — UConn sophomore center Amida Brimah (Accra, Ghana), who is ranked among the top three players in the country in blocked shots, has been named the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year, the league announced today.
UConn’s Amida Brimah was named the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year.
The 7-0 sophomore, who was named an All-League Honorable Mention pick on Monday, has started every game this season for the Huskies and has been a defensive force near the rim. His 3.37 blocks per game average ranks third in all of Division I, as does his total of 101 blocks this season. In the 18 AAC games, Brimah has 72 blocks, a 4.0 average, which leads all conference players.
Brimah’s 101 blocks already stands as the ninth-best total for a single season in UConn history and his career total of 193 ties him with Jake Voskuhl for fifth on UConn’s all-time list.
Brimah joins a long line of UConn players who have received Defensive Player of the Year Awards. Emeka Okafor (2002-03, 2003-04) and Hasheem Thabeet (2007-08, 2008-09) were each named twice as the Big East Conference Defensive Player of the Year and both were also back-to-back winners of the NABC National Defensive Player of the Year Awards for the same seasons.
Other Huskies named Big East Defensive Player of the Year include Donyell Marshall (1993-94), Josh Boone (20054-05), and Hilton Armstrong (2005-06).
Brimah also leads the Huskies and the entire American Athletic Conference in field goal percentage. His .698 mark would be tops in Division I if he had enough made baskets to qualify and his .699 field goal percentage in conference games leads the league.
Other individual awards announced by the AAC today included SMU’s Markus Kennedy as the Sixth Man Award, his SMY teammate Yanick Moreira as the Most Improved Player, and Memphis forward Shaq Goodwin as the winner of the Sportsmanship Award.
The awards are determined by a vote of the league’s coaches, who are not permitted to vote for their own players.
The awards for Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, and Scholar-Athlete of the Year will be announced at a press luncheon on Thursday as the American Athletic Conference Championship begins play with three games at the XL Center.
HARTFORD, Conn. – UConn center Amida Brimah, who had an American Athletic Conference-record 101 blocked shots in the regular season, has been chosen as the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year by the league’s 11 head coaches. The announcement was made Wednesday by Commissioner Mike Aresco.
SMU, which won The American’s regular-season title, had a pair of individual award winners that were announced Wednesday. Mustangs forward Markus Kennedy was the winner of the Sixth Man Award, while center Yanick Moreira was named the conference’s Most Improved Player.
Memphis forward Shaq Goodwin was chosen as the winner of the league’s Sportsmanship Award.
Brimah, the latest in a long line of standout centers for UConn, led the American Athletic Conference in total blocks as a sophomore and was second in the league in blocks per game (3.4). He averaged a league-leading 4.0 blocks per game in conference play and was the anchor of a UConn squad that held opponents to 39.7-percent field goal shooting. Brimah, who was an honorable mention all-conference selection, started all 30 games for the Huskies, averaging 10.0 points and 4.8 rebounds per game.
Kennedy earned honors as The American’s Sixth Man after he averaged 11.2 points and 6.0 rebounds in 20 regular-season games off the bench. He shot 56.3 percent from the field and ranked 11th in the league in scoring in conference games (11.8 ppg). Kennedy was named to the all-conference second team earlier this week.
Moreira, who also earned second-team all-conference honors, was tabbed as the league’s Most Improved Player after he finished the regular season as SMU’s second-leading scorer (11.3 ppg) and the team’s top rebounder (6.4 rpg). He started all 30 games and ranked seventh in The American in rebounding and blocks (1.3 per game). He averaged 6.0 points and 3.9 rebounds for the Mustangs last season.
Goodwin averaged 9.5 points and 7.1 rebounds for Memphis, but was recognized by the league coaches for his sportsmanship, positive demeanor, commitment to player safety and public support of both his teammates and opponents.
The league’s Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, Rookie of the Year and Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards will be presented at a Thursday luncheon at the XL Center in Hartford.
Complete coverage of the 2015 American Athletic Conference Championship will be available on the conference’s Championship Central page at www.TheAmerican.org/mbb.
2015 American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year
Amida Brimah, C, UConn
2015 American Athletic Conference Sixth Man Award
Markus Kennedy, F, SMU
2015 American Athletic Conference Most Improved Player
Yanick Moreira, C, SMU
2015 American Athletic Conference Sportsmanship Award
Shaq Goodwin, F, Memphis
When the UConn Football head coach Bob Diaco ran his first spring practice in 2014, he was a little green as far as what needed to be done.
It’s not that he didn’t know what he was doing since he’d been through many a spring practice as an assistant coach, it’s that he had never been a head coach and responsible for the entire practice. It took some time for the team to get to what Diaco expected but they did it.
So when the UConn Huskies held their first spring practice in 2015 last Saturday., it was a totally different feeling. The players knew what was coming from Diaco as far as what was expected of them and vice versa.
Watch and/or listen below as Diaco talks about the differences.
From UConn:
PROVIDENCE – UConn senior guard Ryan Boatright (Aurora, Ill.), who led the American Athletic Conference in scoring, was a unanimous selection to the All-AAC First Team, the conference announced today.
In addition, UConn freshman Daniel Hamilton (Los Angeles, Calif.) and sophomore Amida Brimah (Accra, Ghana) were Honorable Mention All-League picks and Hamilton was a unanimous selection to the AAC All-Rookie Team.
The all-league teams are selected by a vote of the league’s coaches, who are not permitted to vote for their own players.
Boatright averaged 17.8 points per game in conference games to lead all American Athletic Conference players. He also led the league in free throw percentage (.863) and three-point field goals made (3.0 per game), was second in three-point field goal percentage (.454), and ranked ninth in steals and 12th in assists (3.5).
Overall, Boatright was UConn’s leader in scoring (17.8), assists (4.0), steals (1.4) and minutes played (35.6).He led the Huskies in scoring 18 times, in assists 16 times, steals 15 times, and in rebounding three times. The point guard has 25 double-figure games this season, had 20 or more points in 13 games, and topped the 30-point mark once. Boatright has scored 1,728 career points and handed out 482 assists, which place him ninth in both categories on UConn’s all-time lists.
Hamilton led the conference in rebounding (9.1) and defensive rebounds (7.5) and also ranked in the Top 20 in scoring, assists, free throw percentage and assist/turnover ratio. Overall, the freshman forward was UConn’s second-leading scorer (10.8), leading rebounder (7.6), and second to Boatright in assists (3.6).
Brimah led the American in field goal percentage (.699) and blocked shots (4.0) and was a defensive force around the rim. Overall, he is another double-figure scorer for the Huskies (10.0) and his 3.37 blocks per game average ranks third in the country. He was an AAC All-Rookie Team pick last season.
First Team All-Conference
Ryan Boatright, G, UConn *
Austin Nichols, F, Memphis
Nic Moore, G, SMU *
Will Cummings, G, Temple
James Woodard, G, Tulsa
Second Team All-Conference
Octavius Ellis, F, Cincinnati
Markus Kennedy, F, SMU
Yanick Moreira, C, SMU
Louis Dabney, G, Tulane
Shaquille Harrison, G, Tulsa
Honorable Mention All-Conference:
Troy Caupain, G, Cincinnati
Amida Brimah, C, UConn
Daniel Hamilton, G/F, UConn
Jaylen Bond, F, Temple
All-Rookie Team
Adonys Henriquez, G, UCF
B.J. Taylor, G, UCF
Gary Clark, F, Cincinnati
Daniel Hamilton, G/F, UConn *
B.J. Tyson, G, East Carolina *
* unanimous selection