Huskies Battle Back in Second Half
to Overcome UMass
Boxscore in .pdf
Boxscore in .html
Post game quotes follow story
 HARTFORD, CT (December 10, 2002) -- Freshmen guards Rashad
Anderson (Lakeland, FL) and Denham Brown (Toronto, ONT) and sophomore guard Ben
Gordon (Mt. Vernon, NY) led a furious second half rally as ninth-ranked
Connecticut overcame a horrible start, Tuesday, to defeat Massachusetts 59-48
before a crowd of 14,962 at the Hartford Civic Center.
The victory was the sixth straight to start the season for
UConn, while the Minutemen slipped to 1-5.
Connecticut trailed, 34-9, with 18:37 to play before the
Huskies exploded with eight three-pointers to key a 29-2 run over 12:05 that
included a frenetic 22-0 run. In the decisive rally, Anderson hit three
three-pointers, Gordon hit two from beyond the arc and two free throws and Brown
hit two long-range jumpers. Connecticut was able to wrestle control of the game
from the Minutemen when they applied full-court pressure and forced four key
turnovers in the big spurt.
UMass battled to tie at 38-38, but Mike Hayes (Hartford,
CT) hit back-to-back jumpers and UConn never trailed again, as the Huskies
made their final nine free throws to give them a deceptive 11-point win.
The first half was all Massachusetts, as the Huskies scored
the fewest points in a half under Jim Calhoun, trailing 30-9 at intermission.
The Huskies shot just 15% (4 of 26) in the first half and couldn’t contain
UMass’ Jackie Rogers who had 10 points.
Gordon led UConn with 18 points. Anderson scored a
career-high 16 of the bench and Brown had 11. Center Emeka Okafor (Houston,
TX), the nation’s leading rebounder, snared 13, his sixth consecutive
double-digit rebounding effort of the season.
Anthony Anderson led UMass with 13 points.
The Huskies will now take a 10-day break for semester exams
and will resume their schedule when they host UNC Asheville on Saturday,
December 21, at the Hartford Civic Center. Tip-off is slated for 12:00 p.m. and
the game will be televised by WTXX- TV 20.
QUOTES
UConn Coach Jim Calhoun Quotes v. UMass
It was a tale of two games, obviously. I think in the first half we were
comatose. For whatever reason, Taliek was being played triangle and two and
couldn’t run the offense for us, couldn’t get any break going, and then they’d
wind the clock down to under 10 on us every single time. Instead of becoming
inspired by it, we were deflated by it. And it affected us…We became
discouraged by the fact that we couldn’t run and we were having to play defense
for so long. By the halftime, it was
pretty apparent to me that the press was about that far away from working if we
could get the trap at half court someplace. All we had to do was get the second
line (of the press) to show a little more and get more active. That’s one of
the reasons we used Denham – he’s a more mobile guy, a 4 man even tonight, to
try and get more activity with the press.
There’s no question the press turned the
game around along with Rashad Anderson first, Denham second, Ben, and Emeka’s
shot-blocking. I just think it was a terrific, terrific win for us… I hope the
best thing we did is we learned, hopefully, who we are tonight and that we can
win a game under almost any circumstances. And if you believe that, you can
will yourself.
If we played with the energy in the press in
the first half that we did in the second half, we wouldn’t have been in that
situation in the first place.
I give Steve incredible amounts of credit.
They come in here with one win over Chaminade, facing supposedly the 9th
ranked team in the country...I think Steve just did a terrific job.
George turned to me and said, “Do you think
we’re going to get a basket this half?” And I told him I didn’t know, and
that’s the scary part. But I felt if we could get the press going that’s the
only way we were going to speed the game up. I just didn’t think we could play
half court, in this particular game, down 24 or 25 points.
Rashad Anderson
On His Three Pointers
Coach had a lot of confidence in
me and once I got in the game, I found my rhythm.
On the Team Playing Poorly in the
First Half
Never felt this badly as a team, we felt closer together and put it
together we can do anything when we play together and that’s what we did
tonight.
Coach’s Halftime Speech/About the
Crowd Booing
He told us “this is a pride game, show what you can do, play UConn
basketball” and that’s what we did in the second half.
Coach on Shooting
He gave me the green light since the first day of practice. He told me
if I ever catch the ball in the rhythm to shoot it, because he knows it’s going
to go in, he’s got confidence in me.
On second half
It was a team effort, everybody stepped up on the defensive end. Emeka
made a couple of blocks and had a few rebounds. The offense started up too in
the second half. Any player, any freshman wants to come of the bench and start
up a run.
Taliek Brown
On the First Half
I’ve got to credit them, they played a good game, played hard defense on
us. We’d been getting ready for the triangle all week, they switched it up from
what we were expecting and it confused us. But we responded to it in the second
half.
On the Crowd Booing
They paid their money to come watch us win, but when it comes down to it,
we didn’t play to satisfy them, we had to satisfy ourselves and our coaching
staff.
On the Second Half
Everybody came out more explosive. Denham started shooting the ball
well, Rashad started shooting well. We just started getting open looks from our
offense.
The adrenaline, the pride of our team, we’ve never been in a position like that
before, we knew we couldn’t go out like that, with our fans booing.
On Excitement of Fans
We heard them going crazy, it just got everybody going more.
Denham Brown
Poor First Half
This was a great ball game, we struggled severely in the first half and
couldn’t hit any of our shots. Playing against the triangle made it hard to run
our offense. But in the second half we started getting hungry and doesn’t
matter if you want to run offense, you just put the ball in the basket.
On the Three-Pointers
We go at it in practice, you just feed off the confidence of one another. If
you see one guy hit it, then you go for it and hit it and it just causes a chain
reaction.
Rashaad coming off the bench started the fire, and he’s not
really known for being a defensive player but he got hungry and got us started.
Emeka Okafor
Does this show character in this team?
It shows that we are not going to give up. We were down 34-9 at one point and we
just could have stopped, cried and went home. But we stuck with it. We played
our game. We got refocused. And most of all we stuck together. We had that no
quit attitude and just put up the win.
What happened in the first half?
We were in the ‘Twilight Zone’. I don’t know what we were doing, but we weren’t
playing Connecticut basketball.
On the fans booing
The way we were playing, we deserved it. The fans kind of helped us get
refocused…So we got out in the second half and played our hearts out. And the
fans rewarded us by cheering for us, helping us on, and that helped us get this
win also.
Ben Gordon
In the first half, we ran absolutely no offense. I mean zero offense.
Everything was a one pass and shot…A lot of times we kicked it to a guy on the
wing, he was wide open, and so it was hard to resist taking that shot. And we
were not knocking down the outside shot and I think that’s what hurt us in the
first half.
If we didn’t pull this off, we would have been practicing
tonight. And all 11 days until the next game.
Tonight we had a lot of guys who stepped up, particularly
Denham and Rashad. And don’t forget Mike who hit those two elbow jump shots.
When you were coming back, did you feel invincible?
Everybody’s just yelling, encouraging each other, screaming encouraging words.
And it really helps. I just wish we could psych ourselves up to be like that at
the beginning of the game so we wouldn’t have to go through these problems.
On getting booed
It might be ridiculous to the new players, but I faced it last year against St.
Bonnies. You just don’t expect, going into the game, to hear things like that.
But we came together as a team. And that’s all we really have out there is a
coaching staff and a team when all is said and done. And in the second half we
just stuck together and fought it out.
When did you get a sense that you could pull it off?
Once we got our press defense going, and we saw that they couldn’t handle it, we
just started feeding off of it. It was just like a snowball effect – everything
just rolled over and we just got more baskets and more stops on defense.
Surprised at the confidence of Rashad Anderson?
No, not at all. From the beginning of the year – preseason – you could just see
how confident he was. He wasn’t scared to play against any of the older guys.
It was like he was there for a couple of years already.
He played great defense, which Rashad is not usually know
for. He’s known for his outside shooting. But he played great defense and hit
some big shots.
UMass Head Coach Steve Lappas
I thought our guys did a tremendous job with the things we could control.
If you told me before the game that Emeka Okafor was going to have 4 points, and
Ben Gordon was going to have the kind of 18 that he had -- he's a great player,
don't get me wrong, but it was 18 and a lot of it was at the end -- and that we
were going to outrebound them by 10 rebounds, I would have said "I don't even
care what the score is, that's got to be great for us."
We did a great job tonight, we played as hard as we could.
There's no such thing as moral victories, but as I told the guys on the team,
the way I look at it, these 6 games that we've played were our learning period,
our exhibition season and, now, the season really starts for us on Saturday.
We've learned something about ourselves, we've learned
something about our team. You know, we had some young guys out there, too,
tonight. We had three freshmen play significant minutes....And they looked like
freshmen at times, there's no doubt about it. But I think it bodes well for our
guys as long as we go out there and play with that kind of intensity and
conviction. We knew what we wanted to do and we went out there and really did
our best to do it.
I feel like we ran out of gas and I feel like we didn't
give them the game. Yeah, they made a couple of steals, they made some threes.
The kid Rashad Anderson was averaging less than 2 points per game coming into
this, Mike Hayes hasn't made a jump shot from the foul line EVER and he makes 2
in-a-row. So what are you going to say? I mean, they're a great team. They're
a great team, we gave it our best shot, we're on the road, and that's what
happened.
On halftime score
You couldn't have told me that before the game in a million years that was going
to happen. It was just one of those halves for them, but like great teams....I
know one thing, if we can hold them to nine, they can hold us to nine in a half,
too. We got a little more than 9 in the second half, but not a whole lot more.
And that's what I knew at halftime. I said "Geez, guys, if we could do this to
them I'm sure they can do it to us."
Marcus Cox
It's very frustrating. To be up 30-9 and have them come back is
disappointing, but it's a learning experience for us.
You know I've been in situations like this before with the
team (Connecticut) when we were down by a lot of points and came back in the
second half to win games. I told the team at halftime "We've got the second
half. They're coming, and we've got to be ready." I don't think we cracked up
too much, but I think at certain times we were tentative when we should have been
aggressive.
Micah Brand
In second half
I think a big part of it was that they started hitting a lot of shots that they
didn't hit in the first half, and then the press in the second half kind of
killed us. We were playing a little bit tentatively and not really attacking as
much as we should have. That led to a couple of turnovers. |
