UCF Recap

[aman kidwai]

By William Paxton

STORRS, Conn. – Senior Day started off with a whimper, but UConn rebounded to crush the University of Central Florida 67-46 in front of a sellout crowd Sunday afternoon in the regular-season finale at Gampel Pavilion.

The Huskies (21-10, 11-7 American Athletic Conference) were led by Daniel Hamilton’s 12 points and Sterling Gibbs added 10. Tacko Fall led UCF (12-17, 6-12) with 13 points and A.J. Davis added 12.

The Knights, who scored the fewest points against the Huskies this season in the first meeting with 41, failed to break 50 in either regular season meeting.

UConn never trailed in the second half, after leading 30-24 at the break, and led the final 11 minutes by double digits after Hamilton’s 3-pointer made it 44-33.

The Huskies appeared to have slept in to start the game, falling behind 8-0 before Rodney Purvis fed Amida Brimah for a dunk at 16:47 for UConn’s first points.

The Knights scored at 15:41 to lead 10-4, but stayed stuck on that number as the Huskies slowly climbed back into it with an 11-0 run.

Omar Calhoun’s basket at 10:52 gave UConn its first lead at 11-10 and the senior guard capped the run with another bucket to make it 15-10. A.J. Davis and Adonys Henriquez hit back-to-back 3-pointers to briefly give UCF the lead back at 16-15.

Gibbs scored five of his seven first-half points on the Huskies’ next run, 9-0, which led to a 24-16 advantage.
After shooting just 17 percent in the first nine minutes, UConn finished the half at 36.7 percent (11-for-30) while UCF was at 31 percent (9-for-29). The Huskies shot 52.2 percent (12-for-23) in the second half.

The Huskies’ bench scored 15 points with six from Brimah and Jalen Adams’ five. Davis led the Knights in the half with seven.

 

[the Blades]

By William Paxton

STORRS, Conn. – Senior Day started off with a whimper, but UConn rebounded to crush the University of Central Florida 67-46 in front of a sellout crowd Sunday afternoon in the regular-season finale at Gampel Pavilion.

The Huskies appeared to have slept in to start the game, falling behind 8-0 before Rodney Purvis fed Amida Brimah for a dunk at 16:47 for UConn’s first points.

This... I kid you not, Hamilton looked like he had 2 hours sleep the night before... for most of the game. He came out sloppy and lethargic and then got benched for some more of his terrible WTF TO's ...but even in the second half during the timeouts he seemed like he was breathing harder than normal, hands kind of dragging and looked lethargic coming out of the break, his shot might have looked better because he was so relaxed.

I don't know if he was sick or there were some afterhours parties on campus, but he looked drained most of the game. I could add that in the Houston game I thought the team looked a little gassed too. Maybe off campus, away from extra curricular's and focused will be a plus. Especially playing vs. a team like Cincy and their grind it out D ( refs and how much shoving and bumping they let Cincy do will have a huge impact).....but I saw the first half of the Cincy game yesterday , they had 1 TO total. Can't give away possessions ( TO's, no shot) the way Uconn does and expect to win vs. a team who valued the ball like they do. ( Cincy also won in the TO stat line yesterday with only 5 to 17 for SMU )

 

[KhalidShockedTheWorld]

Hamilton himself admitted in postgame comments that he had come out "flat" and not ready, and that his benching was appropriate. I was kind of struck by the candor of his comments.

When I was a student at UConn the big party night was always Thursdays, because many students, myself included, went home on weekends. But when you are stuck on campus due to being from LA like Hamilton is, weekends could get boring unless you look for some party action.

Daniel has to have a better work ethic than this and certainly he needs to show up to play for 40 minutes against Cincy.

 

[KhalidShockedTheWorld]

Here are the postgame comments by Hamilton that I thought were oddly candid about his play in yesterday's game:

"I just had to settle down and get myself going," Hamilton said. "I came out kind of flat, kind of stiff and I got benched. Once he put me back in, I was ready to play."

It's nice that he knows he sucked coming out of the game in the first half, but at this time of the year you have to play 40 minutes, or you go home.