The Huskies have three-peat potential, but some guys need to make a jump for it to happen.
The 2024-25 college basketball season is fast approaching and with it, the beginning of UConn’s quest for a three-peat.
The 2023 and 2024 National Champions will take the court against outside competition for the first time on October 14 in a charity exhibition against the University of Rhode Island. Then, it all starts for real on November 6 against Sacred Heart.
At this point, we have a pretty good idea of what this team is going to be. We know Alex Karaban will be the go-to guy and that Liam McNeely should be one of the best freshmen in the country. We know Hassan Diarra will have an increased role and that Samson Johnson and Tarris Reed will try and do their best Sanogo-Clingan impression.
But we don’t know exactly how it will all come together.
As has become expected in the Dan Hurley era, the roster is loaded with talent and certainly has title potential yet again. For the team to realize that potential, however, a few things need to go right.
Here are the biggest questions that need answers as the 2024-25 season begins.
Is Hassan Diarra more than a role player?
In two seasons at UConn, Diarra has become a fan favorite. His work ethic, dogged on-ball defense, and even his headband have all endeared him to a fanbase with lofty expectations.
For the Huskies to reach their ceiling in 2024-25, this needs to be the best year of his UConn career. Tristen Newton’s graduation leaves a hole in the backcourt, and with only one starter returning, the Huskies need a steady hand running the point.
There’s reason to believe Diarra will be up to the challenge. He showed last year that even as an academic senior, his game wasn’t done developing. His shooting percentages jumped massively, from 30% to 48% overall and 19% to 36% from three. Diarra’s assist-to-turnover ratio also increased from 1.7 to 2.2, and that’s while playing significantly more minutes.
It’s unfair to expect Diarra to be Newton, who was the 2024 Final Four Most Outstanding Player. But he doesn’t have to be. When he’s in the game, however, he needs to be exactly the floor general that made his high school coach, Tom Espinosa, call him the highest basketball IQ player he’s ever coached.
“He knew every single position at every set we have, and we have a motion offense, but also, we probably have like 50 quick-hitters,” Espinosa told Storrs Central in March. “It was crazy.”
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Which sophomores have made The Jump?
UConn brought in a five-man freshman class last year and, despite four of them seeing sporadic playing time, all but Stephon Castle returned. Castle, of course, was the fourth overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
Out of the others — Solo Ball, Jaylin Stewart, Jayden Ross, and Youssouf Singare — at least a couple will need to build on the promise they showed last year.
Ball and Stewart are the most obvious options. Both have shown they can succeed against elite competition. Ball was instrumental in UConn’s win over North Carolina at the Jimmy V Classic, scoring 13 points in a starting role as Castle was just returning from injury.
Stewart, meanwhile, was key in the Big East championship game against Marquette, making three of his four three-point attempts, including a back-breaking triple in the second half that helped ensure a UConn victory.
Speaking to the media in the preseason, Hurley explained that the first seven players in the Huskies’ rotation were so good that it was impossible to give the freshmen the playing time they deserved. He even said it was difficult explaining to Ball and his family why his minutes dropped after the North Carolina game.
The other side of that is that this is now their moment.
“I think he’s got a good chance to be the guy who makes the biggest jump for us this year,” Hurley said of Ball.
Ian Bethune/The UConn Blog
How well can Samson Johnson and Tarris Reed maintain UConn’s frontcourt dominance?
The frontcourts UConn has trotted out in the last two years may have set unrealistic expectations for Johnson and Reed. They’re not going to do what Adama Sanogo and Donovan Clingan were able to do in 2023, or even what Clingan and Johnson off the bench did last year.
They can, however, continue the line of frontcourt tandems that perfectly complement each other.
Johnson made a huge leap in his junior season but will need to make another as a senior. It’s hard to say exactly what his 2024-25 season will look like, with Dan Hurley teasing last month that the team is still developing its offense in a way to best serve him.
We know that Johnson can add some strength and fine-tune his game offensively. He committed too many turnovers for his position last year (19.6 TO rate), and while he made 73% of his shots from the field, it mostly came from dunks (hence, Slamson Johnson) or shots a couple feet from the basket. If he can improve his rebounding on both ends and learn more creativity in the post, he might be ready for primetime.
As for Reed, he could be a wild card on the team. Hurley and his staff clearly saw something in the Michigan transfer, getting him on campus the same week the Huskies won the National Championship.
In the preseason, Hurley sounded like someone eager to see what Reed could do in a game.
“Tarris’s biggest problem, having spent two months with him, is that he has almost too much physical talent for somebody his size,” Hurley said. “He can do a lot of different things and he ends up having so much variety, and I think that is actually probably the reason why his field goal percentage had not been as high as you’d expect from a center.”
With just days before the Huskies take the court against Rhode Island, we will start to have some clarity soon. Beyond Karaban, every other starting spot is, to a degree, up for grabs.
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