Anderson, Brown Lead No. 20 Huskies Past St. John's, 68-46
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 STORRS, Conn.
(February 5, 2005) – Junior Rashad Anderson (Lakeland, Fla.)
scored 21 points and 20th-ranked Connecticut used a
suffocating defense on their way to a 68-46 victory over St. John’s
Saturday afternoon, before a sellout crowd of 10,167 at the Harry A.
Gampel Pavilion.
The win sends the Huskies to 14-5, 6-3 in the BIG EAST. The
Red Storm drop to 8-11, 2-7 in conference play.
Anderson was the offensive sparkplug off of the UConn
bench, reaching the 20-point plateau for the third time in the past four
contests. He made seven-of-11 field goal attempts, and half of his four from
three-point range. The only other Husky to reach double figures was junior
Denham Brown (Toronto, Ont.), who continued his strong play since returning
to the UConn starting lineup. He scored 17 points on 5-of-7 shooting, and is
averaging 13.5 points per game over the past four contests.
 The story
of the game was the Husky defense as UConn held the Red Storm to just 28%
shooting (18-of-67) and blocked 17 St. John’s shots. The game marked the 12th
time this season that UConn has held an opponent less to than 40% shooting, and
an impressive fourth time an opponent had failed to shoot at least 30% from the
field.
Sophomore Josh Boone (Mt. Airy, Md.) had a solid game, scoring seven
points, hauling in eight rebounds and rejecting career-high nine shots. Freshman
Rudy Gay (Baltimore, Md.) scored nine, had seven rebounds and swatted a
career-best five St. John’s offerings. Point guard Marcus Williams (Los
Angeles, Calif.), the league’s leading assist man, and the nation’s second best,
had nine helpers on the day.
The Huskies scored the game’s first five points and never
trailed in the contest. They enjoyed as much as an eight-point lead during the
opening part of the first half before St. John’s snuck to within one, at 20-19,
on a lay-up by Daryll Hill with 7:42 to play before intermission. But the
Huskies responded with a 14-4 run to close out the half behind Anderson’s five
points and Brown’s four, to take a 34-23 lead into the locker room.
 Although
the Huskies committed a season-high 23 turnovers, they were remarkably
consistent in some aspects of the game. They outscored St. John’s by identical
34-23 scores in both halves and shot 50% from the field in both halves. The
Huskies made all four of their three-point attempts after halftime.
Hill led the Red Storm with a game-high 22 points, but he
shot just 9-of-24 from the field and had six turnovers.
The Huskies return to the hardwood on Monday,
Feb. 7, when they travel to Syracuse, N.Y. to face the Orange at the Carrier
Dome. Tip-off is set for 7:00 p.m., and the game will be televised nationally by
ESPN as part of Big Monday.
POST GAME QUOTES
Connecticut Head Coach
Jim Calhoun
"St. John’s played as hard as we thought they would. They
played as tough."
"I was scared of this game being a trap…with Syracuse and
North Carolina coming up, with kids, you can’t hide the schedule from them. And
when they saw that we had a great size advantage, then once we got a lead they
were trying to put the game away."
 "What saved us was defense, we
played magnificent defense. I watched Hill somewhat last year and he has really
changed, Norm deserves a great deal of credit. He takes good shots. He got his
points but it was a costly price."
"Defensively, Denham Brown is playing great as a starter.
He is shooting the heck out of the basketball; he is as good a player as we have
right now. Rashad comes in and does what he has to do. Even though Rudy didn’t
have big numbers tonight he defense is getting better, he did have 5 blocked
shots."
"The 17 blocked shots certainly can be very discouraging
for another team. They get the ball to places, and 17 of the balls were blocked,
and probably another 10 or 12 were bothered and that’s where the 29% field goal
defense comes into play."
"We’ve got to learn how to play with the league, but I
think we are getting better, especially defensively. I think our improvement on
the perimeter has been great."
"I’m really concerned with the fact that we’re not scoring in the paint."
Freshman Rudy Gay
On how tough the league is
"Without all of the weight training that we have done so far in the season, I
don’t know where I’d be."
On playing Pitt and Notre Dame again
"I know we are ready. They are both games that we could have won, we know what
we did wrong in those games."
Sophomore Josh Boone
On St. John’s
"They are a little bit undersized but they make up for it in effort."
On depth of Connecticut
"It is good to have the type of depth that we do, some teams don’t. Some other
teams in the BIG EAST have that same type of depth, but a lot of other teams do
not have quite the depth that we do. We have eight or nine guys that can come
off of the bench and give us the spark we need."
On Denham Brown and Rashad Anderson
"They were the scoring answer for us tonight. Once again the inside was not
doing it…they were sending a lot of guys inside as soon as we were getting the
ball. That put a lot of pressure on Denham, Rashad and Rudy, but they responded,
if they weren’t shooting a 3 they were going to the basket, getting fouled or
getting a layup."
On St. John’s scoring drought
"That’s a credit to our defense, that was really the key for us to winning the
game was our defense. We saw that this was going to be a different kind of game
than we’re used to, so we focused on trying to shut them down."
St. John’s Head Coach Norm Roberts
"Connecticut is a really good basketball team. They are
obviously an extremely well-coached team and they did a good job of shooting the
basketball. We are small, so we had to try the pressure and I thought we did a
good job."
"Their length really bothered us. We had some easy put
backs and shots that didn’t roll in for us. We didn’t finish really well. Give
them credit, they were extremely physical, pushing and not letting you get where
you wan to be. That’s a mark of a really good team."
On what the difference was in the second half
"They wore us down, they are bringing in McDonald’s All American’s off of the
bench. They have really good players and that kind of wore us down. I thought we
got frustrated with the physicality of the game and we got out of rhythm a
little bit. We are not great shooting team, we struggle a bit, but they did a
good job of defending."
On Eugene Lawrence
"We are going with Gene, there’s not much else we are going to go to. Gene is
doing a good job, trying well, he is only a freshman and he is playing 40
minutes a game. He’s going to make those mistakes and I want him to shoot the
ball when he’s open. I don’t want to take any of his confidence away. He’s
trying to make plays for us."
On Daryl Hill
"He did a good job, he tried to get in there but they’ve got such great
length. They do a great job of walling up and not committing. Then they don’t
give you passing lane, and make you score over the top. I thought Daryll did
that well early on but they did a good job of defending him."
On playing with intensity
"I would think if you ask Coach Calhoun we play hard. We do play hard. I’m proud
of my kids, they play extremely hard. We just don’t have the depth and skill
that some other teams have, but I don’t think there are many teams that play a
lot harder than we do."
On UConn’s transition
"They are one of the best transition teams in America. They get it out and go
and go."
On what to take away from the game
"We didn’t take a step back today. We played extra hard. We were focused. I
thought there are some things we can do to improve. It’s tough to win on the
road in this league, it’s tough to bead somebody like UConn in their place with
the talent and depth that they have right now. If we stay focused and keep
playing like this, good things will happen." |
