Last season when the UConn Huskies went to Maui for the EA Sports Invitational, we caught a glimpse of how good they might be. This year, while in the Bahamas for the Battle 4 Atlantis, we were hoping for the same thing.
Instead, we are now left wondering how the team will respond as Marcus Jordan, yes the son of Michael Jordan, put his UCF Knights team on his back in the second half and led them to a 68-63 upset win over UConn in the semifinals of the Battle 4 Atlantis at Imperial Arena at Atlantis in the Bahamas.
The No. 4 Huskies, who fall to 5-1 on the season and see their 16-game winning streak snapped, will take on the No. 21 Florida State Seminoles for third place on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. UCF improves to 4-1 and will play the Harvard Crimson for the title at 4:30 p.m. Both of those games will be televised on Versus.
M. Jordan had 20 points and led his team with seven rebounds and seven assists while Keith Clanton also added 20 points and six rebounds. Isaiah Sykes added 10 points. The other son of the MJ, Jeff, had just two points in 21 minutes of action.
The Huskies were led in scoring by Jeremy Lamb who had 15 points. Alex Oriakhi, coming off the bench for the second straight game, had his finest game of the season as he put up 14 points and 10 rebounds for his first double-double of the season and had five blocked shots. Andre Drummond just missed a double-double himself with 13 points and nine rebounds to go along with four blocked shots.
Honestly this game was one that UConn probably should have won. I’ve said before this season, this team has been lacking an identity and a killer instinct. It looked as though at one point with the Huskies up 17 points in the second half, they’d easily be moving on to the championship game on Saturday afternoon.
But UCF switched to a zone, made some buckets behind Jordan as the Huskies folded faster than a poker player with an awful hand. For some reason, the Huskies have never been able to figure out zones too well and that was the case. We’ve seen flashes where they can figure out how to beat the zone to get the opposing team out of it but there was none of that in this game.
Shabazz Napier tried to dribble through to it no avail. They tried to run Lamb 1-on-1 at times, that didn’t work. I didn’t see them really try to run a set offense when in UCF was in the zone where someone like a Tyler Olander who flashes to the key in the zone.
It will be really really interesting to see how the Huskies respond to adversity. Will this team come out with a fire tomorrow like nothing happened or will they let what happened in the loss bother them in tomorrow’s game?
How they respond tomorrow will tell us what we can expect for the rest of the season. Knowing Jim Calhoun like we do, I’m guessing the Huskies bounce back nicely.
We will finally get to see Shabazz get some rest and not when he’s in foul trouble as Ryan Boatright will finally make his UConn debut after being suspended for the first six games of the season.
Maybe he’s just what the Huskies need on Saturday.
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Notes and musings:
UCF Knights @ UConn Huskies 11.25.11 Battle 4 Atlantis Semifinals box score
Kemba Walker was in the crowd along with his mom to watch the Huskies. Juanita Jordan, MJ’s ex-wife, was there to cheer on the Knights and her two sons.
Former UConn Husky and CSNNE Celtics analyst Donny Marshall did the color on the Versus telecast.
The starters for the Huskies were Shabazz Napier, Jeremy Lamb, DeAndre Daniels, Tyler Olander and Andre Drummond.
The Huskies shot 42.4% (25-59) from the floor while the Knights shot 40% (22-55).
UConn had just seven assists on their 25 made baskets with Shabazz leading the way with five.
The Huskies were just 2-of-18 (11.1%) on threes. On the other hand, UCF was 7-of-17 (41.2%).
As we’ve come to expect with this UConn team, they can’t shoot free throws. They were 11-of-17 (64.7%). Make five of those misses and this game may go to overtime. Oh by the way, UCF, which is an awful free throw shooting team, was 17-of-21 (81%).
The Huskies did win the battle on the boards as they outrebounded the Knights 39-30.
UConn outscored UCF 42-28 in the paint and just 4-2 on the fast break.
The Huskies had six points off of eight Knights turnovers. UCF had 22 points off of 13 UConn turnovers.
UConn had 22 second chance points to 13 for UCF.
I was traveling back today and did my absolute best not to know the final score before getting home. And that explains why this recap is later than normal. My grandmother, despite us telling her not to tell us the score, called my father and let him know the final score. Thankfully my father didn’t ruin it for me as I could honestly say that if I knew they were going to lose, I wouldn’t have watched.
I will have the video of the halftime feature with Jeremy Lamb up on the site in a little while as well.
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