UConn's Dan Hurley reveals what made him feel like a 's****y coach' vs. St. John's
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Despite playing at home in front of a friendly crowd at Gampel Pavilion, UConn basketball wasn’t able to come out on top in one of its biggest games of the season. Even though the Huskies jumped out to a big early lead, it was Big East-leading St. John’s who stormed back and came away with a hard-fought 68-62 win.
You don’t have to look too hard at the box score to find out what went wrong for UConn in this game. Dan Hurley’s squad turned the ball over 22 times, leading to 18 St. John’s points, while the Red Storm only gave it away seven times in the game. That allowed Rick Pitino and the Johnnies to come out on top despite shooting just 40% from the field and 4-for-21 from beyond the arc.
This is the second straight game where UConn has struggled to take care of the ball after it finished with 25 giveaways in a win over Marquette last Saturday. After the loss on Friday night, Hurley expressed his displeasure with the miscues and placed the brunt of the blame on himself, via Adam Zagoria of the New York Times.
“We've been playing with fire, we were fortunate to win at Marquette with 25 turnovers,” Hurley said, per Zagoria. “But we've been playing with fire and the 22 turnovers, the 47 in the last two games is just really low level.
“When you have 47 turnovers in 2 games, it makes you feel like you’re a s****y coach.”
UConn’s flaws exposed in loss to St. John’s
UConn couldn’t overcome St. John’s despite the return of Liam McNeeley, and the turnovers played a big part in that. Giving the ball away 22 times is a recipe for disaster, but it speaks to a deeper problem with this UConn team.
While this is still a talented squad, it is significantly more flawed than either of the last two iterations that won the National Championship. This UConn team still fouls way too much, but its guard play is the biggest problem right now.
Hassan Diarra is a solid starting point guard, but he is a bit of a combo guard and thrives when he is able to play away from the ball like he was on last year’s team. He still struggles at times to run the offense for the better part of 40 minutes when he is on the floor, and that leads to some of the sloppiness that hurt the Huskies on Friday night. UConn also doesn’t have a backup point guard, so the offense gets very discombobulated when Diarra is off the floor.
Hurley said on Friday that UConn isn’t a very good dribbling team overall, and that plays out when you see the Huskies’ lack of shot creators. Hurley and company will be talented enough to beat most teams, but these problems could haunt them when March rolls around.
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