Solo Ball hit seven threes as the Huskies led wire to wire
In a game that could change the trajectory of their season, the No. 25 UConn men led No. 9 Marquette wire-to-wire and held on for a 77-69 win in Milwaukee on Saturday.
The game was far from perfect — and far from ordinary, not that it matters. The Huskies turned the ball over 25 times against Shaka Smart’s notoriously pesky defense, and the Golden Eagles converted that into 29 points.
The Huskies got off to a fast start thanks to Jaylin Stewart’s trio of early threes (he seems to like playing Marquette for some reason). UConn also benefitted from Marquette missing 10 free throws in the first half, helping to offset early Husky foul trouble.
UConn took its biggest lead on a pair of Alex Karaban free throws with 2:27 to play in the first half, putting them up 42-20. But Marquette is a top-10 team playing at home and a run was inevitable. The Golden Eagles scored the final nine points of the first half to jumpstart a 15-2 run to bring them back within single digits.
UConn could have folded. The Huskies are still without Liam McNeeley and Ahmad Nowell, and Hassan Diarra has been visibly hobbled by a knee injury. There’s no shame in losing a game like this.
Solo Ball wouldn’t have it. The sophomore had a career-high 25 points and every one of them seemed to come at a big moment. The sophomore went 7-9 from three, making five in the second half as Marquette methodically chipped away at UConn’s lead.
“Every time the ball leaves my hands, I’m thinking it’s going in,” he said. “If I get a little bit of space I’m just gonna make sure I shoot it. Because if I give it up my coaches are gonna be super mad at me.”
Karaban, much maligned this season for disappearing during big moments, made an impact as well. He played all 40 minutes, scoring 15 points with four rebounds, three assists, two steals and two blocks.
He went 4-8 from the field and no shot was bigger than a line drive from the foul line with the shot clock running down after the under-eight timeout in the second half. It put the Huskies back up 11 as the Golden Eagles turned up the heat defensively.
As a team, UConn had its best shooting game of the season. The Huskies were 60% from the field and 12-19 from three. They also made 15 of their 19 free throw attempts.
As great as those numbers are, head coach Dan Hurley felt it masked the lack of intensity he has called out during the conference season.
“There were stretches in the second half where we weren’t desperate enough,” he said. “We don’t play with the tenacity our past teams have played with. We got bailed out because Solo had a crazy shooting night.”
But to put it all on hot shooting would be selling the defensive effort short. The Huskies were much better guarding the ball one-on-one and defending the 3-point line. It showed up in the box score as the Golden Eagles shot 40% overall and 32% from three. Yes, those 3-point numbers are roughly on line with what Marquette shoots overall, but it also reflects the Huskies leaving fewer shooters wide open, closing out better and sticking to their rotations.
“We just had to come in and make sure that we focused on defense and that would set the tone for the rest of the game,” Ball told Fox after the game.
UConn now has almost a week to get healthy before Rick Pitino and a red-hot St. John’s team comes to Gampel Pavilion next Friday night. The Red Storm are alone in first place in the Big East (10-1), and with the Huskies two games behind them, it’s essentially a must-win for their regular season title hopes.
Hurley expects the team to be ready.
“We gotta get Hassan healthy, and Liam will be at full strength as long as there’s no setbacks,” he said. “We’ll hopefully get Nowell back too.”
That will be the test to see if this game really changed the trajectory of the season.