UCONN bests Tennessee 72-61 for fifth straight win; four Huskies score in double figures

In their most impressive win of the season the UCONN Huskies bested the pesky Tennessee Vols yesterday in a nationally televised contest at the Hartford Civic Center. Although the Vols were unranked, they started the season off 6-0 with wins over Pitt and Villanova and were ranked as high as #9 in the AP poll. However, their head coach, Bruce Pearl was given an 8 conference game suspension for lying to the NCAA about having had recruits to his house to a BB-que. The Vols have lost the bulk of their games when Pearl is not on the bench and have dropped out of the top 25despite having a good deal of talent, which was on display yesterday. The Vols led for most of the first half and held Kemba Walker scoreless for 15 minutes. The Huskies upped their defensive intensity and tied the game at 24 with about four minutes left in the period. Kemba came alive and hit a beautiful trey at the buzzer that gave the Huskies a 32-31 lead at the break.
In the second half, the Huskies looked better than they have all season with several very encouraging trends beginning to emerge. First and foremost, the four players in double figures reflected not only the development of Oriakhi, Lamb and Smith but Walker's growing trust in his teammates. As I had said earlier in the season when everyone knew the scoring and ball needed to be more evenly distributed you couldn't just turn on a switch and make it happen. Slowly but surely there is a synergistic interplay of Walker distributing the ball more and the aforementioned players gaining confidence and beginning to show consistency and flashes of outstanding play. Oriakhi, scored 12 points and had 10 rebounds for his fourth double/double during the win streak; he is developing a nice left-handed hook down low and becoming more aggresive on offense. Lamb was the co-scoring leader along with Walker yesterday with 16 points on 6-9 shooting from the field, his third straight game in double figures. Smith had 12 on four deft three pointers and is beginning to look like the highly touted recruit we heard about pre-season. Napier made some Freshman type turnovers yesterday but continues to add tremendous defensive and up tempo spark when he is on the floor.
Two surprises have been the improved play of Seniors Donnell Beverley and Charles Oakwondo. Although Beverley sees only 5-10 minutes a game he seems to be able to calm the team down if the offense is going astray and put a few points on the board. Oakwando is an example of what one has to say is a Calhoun coaching trademark. Oakwando is the fourth big man in the last nine years who has looked utterly hapless his first three years and then made major contributions in their Senior years. The same thing could be said of Hilton Armstrong, Gavin Edwards, and Hasheem thabeet. Oakwondo, in only 6 solid minutes yesterday, scored 6 points and had 5 rebounds and has started to be a contributor. Calhoun's rotation is tightening and taking shape. Walker rarely comes off the floor and Smith and Oriakhi played 35 and 33 minutes yesterday. Lamb was on the floor for 23 minutes and Napier for 21. The remaining minutes were split between Olander, Coombs-Mcdaniel, Oakwando and Beverley all playing less than 10 minutes.
This was an interesting week of January play in the NCAA. Upsets abounded as all the teams are playing mostly tough conference games. The week started with #8 ranked UCONN beating #7 ranked Villanova. Yesterday, Villanova beat #3 and previously unbeaten in the Big East Syracuse and #10 Texas knocked off #2 undefeated Kansas. The Huskies had already beaten "Nova and Texas. It will be interesting to see how the pollsters treat these results but I expect the Huskies to move to #6 or 5 in the polls. More importantly, at this point in the season, unlike their earlier week at #4, I believe they now belong among the top five teams in the country.

"You Heard it Here First"
Steve