The UConn men’s basketball team is coming off a brutal loss last Saturday on the road at Xavier. This was a contest where, yet again, the Huskies struggled defensively, fouling at a high level. It became so bad that Alex Karaban fouled out with three and a half minutes left in a tight ball game. Again, freshman Liam McNeeley never suited up for the program, still nursing his high ankle sprain. However, Connecticut has a prime opportunity to get back into the win column this Wednesday at the XL Center, as the program will host the DePaul Blue Demons.
While Connecticut’s 6-3 Big East record is not where the program would like it to be, the Blue Demons have struggled to generate any solid momentum in the conference. DePaul owns a 1-9 record, with their lone win coming over Georgetown. While UConn is expected to cruise towards victory, they did not play a complete game the last time these sides squared away.
While UConn dominated the first half of their New Year’s Day showdown at DePaul, the second half did not go to plan. The Huskies dominated the first half, blowing the Blue Demons out of the water, putting up 43 points in the first half while only giving up 22. Yet, Connecticut’s defense let DePaul crawl right back into that contest, conceding 46 second-half points. In fact, the Huskies were outplayed near the end of the game, being outscored by eight points in those 20 minutes. The Huskies being outplayed was also due to the second-half scoring surge of Conor Enright, who shook off an unideal first half in a big way.
The junior guard accumulated 17 points on 6-7 shooting, including a 4-4 slash from the charity stripe. Despite only averaging slightly above seven points a night for DePaul, the Huskies will want to watch plenty of film on Enright to prevent a rerun of his second-half heater. Of course, the defense will want to ensure they contain DePaul’s leading scorer, Jacob Meyer, who has struggled as of late. The sophomore guard has been amid a three-game cold streak, failing to crack double digits in any game in that span. Considering that he is a significant part of the DePaul game plan, Dan Hurley’s squad will want to center his defensive focus on making Meyer uncomfortable offensively, allowing only low-percentage shots. On the other side of the ball, Hurley and the Huskies will be looking for a big game out of Karaban, who is coming off a tough performance.
The redshirt junior logged 31 minutes for Connecticut, though he was not his effective self, scoring only nine points on 4-13 shooting, including 1-6 from downtown. Despite Karaban’s less-than-ideal performance, the McNeeley-less Huskies kept it close, losing by only two possessions. If the program wishes to return to the winning side of things at home, they will need Karaban’s A-game, which he has brought so many times before.
In fact, the last time these Big East foes met, Karaban torched the DePaul defense. He found the bottom of the net at an efficient 6-13 clip, including an excellent 4-8 from beyond the arc to round out an excellent 18-point performance. Expect Wednesday to be a big bounce-back game from the two-time national champion, as the program will hope for Karaban to get back into the groove of things as more challenging games are just around the corner.
The Huskies will also be looking for a more significant scoring boost out of their sophomore class as, outside of Solo Ball, whose scoring production was lacking at Xavier. Jayden Ross and Jaylin Stewart logged a combined 37 minutes, yet they could not find the bottom of the net more than once. Both athletes have shown flashes of what Hurley has repeatedly discussed that he needs out of the pair. Ross was an instant spark plug off the bench for Connecticut with a seven-point flurry in the program’s narrow 68-60 road win at Georgetown. On the other hand, Stewart has proved that when he’s on, he can be an effective scorer, such as in the program loss at Creighton on Jan. 18. Without the Seattle native’s 14-point performance, that contest would not have come down to the last few possessions but would have instead been decided much earlier. On both sides of the ball, the Huskies need more consistency from this pair, especially since McNeeley will be a game-time decision for Wednesday’s contest. Looking at how these sophomores perform offensively on Wednesday since the success of the program without McNeeley is highly correlated with how the wings score the basketball.
While Wednesday is expected to be the Huskies’ seventh win of this season’s Big East campaign, many long-term trends will emerge from this contest. Not to mention, the competition for the Huskies gets more challenging, and quicker. After Wednesday, UConn will face No. 9 Marquette, No. 15 St John’s and Creighton, three games that will be an all-out war. UConn needs a win, badly, on Wednesday, and you can catch all the action at 8 p.m. at either the XL Center or on Peacock.