Gay Leads Huskies Over Army, 68-54

Box Score [.html]
Box Score [.pdf]

HARTFORD, Conn.  (November 29, 2005) – Sophomore Rudy Gay (Baltimore, Md.) notched the third double-double of his career to lead three teammates in double figures as third-ranked Connecticut shook off the cobwebs to defeat scrappy Army, 68-54, before 16,294 at the Hartford Civic Center.

The win was Connecticut’s fifth straight to start the season.  The contest marked the Huskies’ first action since returning from Hawaii and their championship in the Maui Invitational.  The Black Knights drop to 2-3.

The Huskies had their hands full with Army, leading just 29-27 when Army’s Corban Bates hit a three-pointer with 1:04 to play before intermission.  Senior Rashad Anderson (Lakeland, Fla.) hit two three-pointers before the half, and the Huskies went on a 16-0 run that bridged halftime.  Junior Josh Boone (Mt. Airy, Md.) had five of the Huskies’ 10 points to start the second stanza.  Army could get no closer than 10 points the rest of the way. 

Gay finished with 17 points on four-of-seven shooting and was successful on nine-of-11 free throw attempts.  He also added a game-high (and a career-high tying) 10 rebounds, and a game-best five steals.  Anderson finished with 16 points, 14 before the half.  He made three-of-five from three-point range.  Boone and senior Hilton Armstrong (Peekskill, N.Y.) each had 10 points for UConn.

The Huskies labored from the field throughout the contest, making just 42 percent (22 of 53) of their field goal attempts.  They made up for their shooting by out-rebounding Army, 41-26, and by forcing 19 turnovers, which they converted into 31 points.  The Huskies, led by freshman Craig Austrie’s (Stamford, Conn.) seven assists, pounded the ball inside to the tune of 30 points in the paint.  UConn converted 19 offensive rebounds into 16 second-chance points.

The Black Knights were led by guard Jarell Brown, who scored 26 points on 11-of-20 shooting.  He made four three-pointers in almost single-handedly keeping Army in the contest.

UConn will make their 2005-06 Gampel Pavilion debut when they entertain Texas Southern on Friday, December 2.  Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m. and the game will be televised by WTIC-Fox  61 in the Hartford area.

POSTGAME QUOTES

Please note there are no Jim Calhoun quotes
due to technical difficulties.

UConn Player Quotes

Rashad Anderson

"We came out lackadaisical, not defending.  Things like this happen when you come out not ready to play.  We just didn’t come ready to play – bottom line.  We didn’t defend the perimeter tonight.  They set a lot of backscreens, sort of like a Princeton offense, UCLA cuts.  We just didn’t defend, that’s why the game was so close.  We just didn’t play defense.  Big guys weren’t helping us on certain screens, and we were helping the big guys on certain screens.  It’s just a learning process.  We have to go back and watch film and learn from our mistakes."

Did you feel like you were getting a little more rhythm on offense?

"Without question.  But not only that, just as a team.  I’m not worried about myself, that’s going to be there.  I know I’m going to be ready to play every game.  As a team, we just didn’t come ready to play in the first half."

Can you explain the poor performance?

"I don’t know.  You can’t put a finger on it.  We have to go back to the drawing board in practice and make sure it doesn’t happen again.  We just have to come out and run our offense.  When we were running our offense, we scored at will.  Then we stopped running our offense.  I took a couple bad shots, and everybody started taking bad shots."

On Rashad’s run of baskets

"I just took it upon myself to kind of change the game."

Hilton Armstrong

"We just broke down mentally tonight.  We have to make sure that doesn’t happen again."

On Rashad’s shooting

"His jump shot is falling for now and giving him a lot more confidence again.  We need that because he’s a big part of this team."

Rudy Gay

On his stats tonight

"Coach spoke to me about getting on the boards, I wanted to get into that tonight."

On Army

"You can’t take anyone for granted.  They came out here and played hard.  Every single team is going to play like that against us."

On Rashad’s night

"He had a lot to do with us getting our lead.  After he hit a couple shots everybody started feeling it, getting steals and playing UConn basketball."

Craig Austrie

On Army

"They played good, good offense, you’ve got to give them credit, they are Army, they played hard.  They did a good job.  We came in a little lackadaisical and didn’t play up to par. "

On pressure from Coach

"He was on me all game, I just have to learn when to take shots and when not to take shots…that’s what I’m learning…the process goes on."

On playing flat today

"I was surprised.  We’ve got to learn from a situation like this…especially in the month of December we’re going to be playing teams that are not as good as we are.  We’ve got to learn to really come out and play hard every game."

Army Head Coach Jim Crews

"I thought the first half, we really wanted to break it up into four minute increments, the media time outs at 16, 12, eight and four.  If I’m not mistaken, we were leading at every one of those.  The last four minutes they really swept us with that run and made it an eight point deficit at the half.  We started off very sluggishly in the second half.  They picked up the intensity a little bit and we weren’t able to cut into that eight point lead and then it went to a spread of probably 15.   Then we just started playing better basketball, and just kept pounding away and pounding away.

We got a little bit better tonight."

On Jarell Brown

"Jarell did a good job cutting, getting into the core of the defense.  He hit some threes early, but then he got better at getting those 12 footers, eight footers, 14 footers, some leaners that he can knock in.  So he did a really nice job and they did a good job of delivering the ball to him on time, so that was nice to see."

On UConn

"They’re a very, very good basketball team.  We didn’t concentrate on Connecticut.  We’re just trying to concentrate on doing what we try to work on every day.  For the most part our kids did a pretty good job against a team that’s probably as talented, if not the most talented team in the country."