Can UConn pull off a historic three-peat? The next three weeks will provide some answers

UConn head coach Dan Hurley has the Huskies at 4-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country as they try to win a third straight national title. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

Dan Hurley began his postgame news conference this past Tuesday by laying a printout of the box score on the table in front of him and staring at it with disdain.

For the next 10 minutes, the UConn men’s basketball coach acted like he couldn’t find a single positive thing to say about a performance he deemed “comically bad.”

Rebounding? “So far below our standard,” Hurley moaned.

Ball security? “It’s been a long time since we’ve been that bad,” Hurley howled.

Defense? “The amount of times we were driven!” Hurley lamented.

“No one played well tonight,” Hurley insisted. “You can have bad shooting nights, but you can’t play like that. That’s not acceptable.”

If viewers didn’t know better, they would’ve surely assumed UConn lost to East Texas A&M. In reality, the Huskies won by 35. They opened a double-digit lead in the game’s first nine minutes, extended it to 22 by halftime and coasted to an 81-46 rout.

Hurley’s scathing assessment of his team’s performance wasn’t merely a product of UConn’s season-high 19 turnovers against East Texas A&M’s switching defense or the 17 offensive rebounds the Huskies surrendered. The infamously hard-to-please coach clearly wanted to refocus the undefeated Huskies right before their schedule gets a whole lot harder.

The next three weeks will serve as the ultimate litmus test for whether two-time reigning national champion UConn is capable of a historic three-peat, a feat no men’s college basketball program has achieved since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty. The second-ranked Huskies (4-0) will likely play six games during that stretch against teams receiving votes in the current AP Top 25.

It begins Monday when UConn opens the Maui Invitational against an undefeated Memphis team that has already toppled the likes of Missouri and UNLV. Up next is…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-11-21 21:51:00

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