The Huskies have to look in the mirror after an unacceptable loss.
Looking at their schedule from this past week, UConn men’s hoops had already done the hard part. The Huskies went into No. 24 Creighton’s home court Tuesday in Omaha, Nebraska and stole a win — their first ever in that arena.
UConn seemed like a lock to go 2-0 on the week heading into Saturday afternoon’s game against Seton Hall. A Pirates roster nursing a 6-18 overall, 1-12 in conference play record had little to show for the 2024-25 season, and a comfortable win might help some Husky players get back on track or even get the team back into the top 25.
But UConn didn’t show up early and collapsed late, twice.
“It felt like it was justice tonight. They deserved to win…we got what we deserved,” head coach Dan Hurley said following the 69-68 loss.
There isn’t one sole reason for the loss. The Huskies scored 22 points in the first half, with an especially poor 2-13 performance from three. They couldn’t run the floor — UConn scored two fastbreak points all game and coughed the ball up 16 times, leading to nine points off turnovers.
“We were soft in the first half,” Hurley said. “Offensively, we were weak at the rim with our finishes.”
The loss comes in part from a hearty performance from Shaheen Holloway’s team, but largely due to the Huskies’s many late-game failures. Inbounding the ball proved especially difficult for UConn, with multiple turnovers and five-second violations called. The Pirates implemented a full-court press that was highly effective.
“You got to be able to cut toward the ball, make a second move toward the lane, maybe backpedal backward to sell a deep pass to be able to get to the ball,” Hurley said. “You also have to want to get open.”
Rebounding on the defensive end that ended up being UConn’s biggest shortcoming. Two key offensive rebounds allowed hammered the nail in the Huskies’ coffin. The first came at the end of regulation. With about nine seconds left, Seton Hall’s Godswill Erheriene whiffed a dunk — one that would have kept the Huskies ahead by one point — that ricocheted back toward the three-point line. Dylan Addae-Wusu drilled a three-pointer to tie the game with seconds left on the clock.
In overtime, with UConn up by one, Seton Hall’s Scotty Middleton missed what would have been a go-ahead layup to take the lead with three seconds left. Middleton gathered himself to tip the ball back in for the game-winning basket.
“Credit us for really putting forth a regrettable performance,” Hurley said.
UConn drops to 17-8 on the year and 9-5 in conference play but this loss feels as if it carries the most weight. Instead of celebrating a successful week, UConn will look back on the film and wonder where it all went wrong.
They gear up for a two-game week that will be an even bigger test than the last one, starting Tuesday against Villanova and Sunday against St. John’s at Madison Square Garden.