Robinson Nets Career-High 32

In UConn's 105-60 Win Over Maine

Box Score [pdf] [html]

Statistics [pdf] [html]

HARTFORD, Conn. (December 22, 2007) - Sophomore forward Stanley Robinson (Birmingham, Ala.) scored a career-high 32 points and all three starting front court players for the Huskies registered double-doubles as the University of Connecticut men's basketball team easily defeated Maine, 105-60, Saturday afternoon before a crowd of 12,244 in the newly-renamed XL Center.

The win, Connecticut’s third in succession, gives the Huskies an 8-2 record on the season. The Black Bears drop to 4-7.

Robinson put on one of the most scintillating performances by a Husky in recent memory. He eclipsed his previous career-high in scoring in the first half when he scored 24 points on a variety of three-point shots, mid-range jumpers and thunderous dunks. He made 10-of-13 shots in the first half on his way to a 13-for-18 performance for the game. He also yanked down 11 rebounds to achieve his third double-double of his career.

Robinson had plenty of company in the scoring and rebounding columns as fellow starters Jeff Adrien (Brookline, Mass.) and Hasheem Thabeet (Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania) also had huge games. Adrien scored 19 points and grabbed 13 rebounds, while Thabeet had 16 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and swatted away eight Black Bear shots.

Junior guard A.J. Price (Amityville, N.Y.) had a solid game as well, running the Connecticut point. Price had 17 points, while dishing out nine assists. He did that while committing just one turnover in 34 solid minutes. Price was forced to shoulder an additional burden as the Huskies were forced to make due with injured leading scorer Jerome Dyson (Rockville, Md.) being limited to just 12 minutes of playing time due to an injured knee.

Sophomore forward Gavin Edwards (Gilbert, Ariz.) scored 10 points and had six rebounds in just nine minutes of playing time.

The Huskies started slowly in the contest, trailing early by four, but exploded with a streak of seven consecutive field goals to increase an 11-8 lead to a 26-13 advantage over a stretch of 3:17 of playing time. The Huskies cruised to a 52-38 advantage at the half.

The Huskies played a fluid offensive contest throughout breaking the 100-point barrier for the first time since Dec. 3, 2006 against Texas Southern. The 32 points scored by Robinson marked the first time since Rashad Anderson scored 33 points against Morehead State on December 23, 2005, that a Husky scored at least 30 points.

The Huskies shot at least 50 percent for the second consecutive game and had 25 assists against just 11 turnovers.

Junior Bernal led the Black Bears with 16 points.

The Huskies will now travel to Orlando to play at the University of Central Florida on Friday, December 28. Tip-off is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. and the contest will be televised by CSTV.

Connecticut Head Coach Jim Calhoun

For us, this was a good step forward.

I’m leaving here today, feeling very good about when we convene again on Christmas night…that, even though we have a really tough four out of five games on the road, that we’re a better basketball team than we were a month ago.

Today we showed, we looked like we weren’t just the most talented team, we looked like we were the better team. That’s a nice feeling from a coaching standpoint.

On Stanley Robinson When Jeff Adrien and he play with great energy, good things happen. Both of them are superior athletes, one is incredibly strong, the other is incredibly mobile and obviously has great skills. Energy solves a great many problems. Stanley combined athleticism, skill and energy today. It was the kind of performance as a coach that you just sit and don’t do any coaching – just don’t mess with them at all – and marvel at what he did. I don’t care who where playing, what we’re doing, where the venue is – he was pretty special. We haven’t had too many special performances in the past two years.

On A.J. Price It hurts Ted a little bit that they don’t have a guy like A.J. running his basketball team….A.J. Price is really running the game right now. His numbers of 9/1, 8/1, and that type of thing is really, really allowing us to be a much, much better basketball team.

Maine Head Coach Ted Woodward

We knew what we were facing coming in here. I have a tremendous amount of respect for UConn….You can just see that their energy level has been rising tremendously over the last couple of weeks. I think they’re really playing together very well.

I thought they did a great job defensively in neutralizing a couple of our guys. We talked before the basketball game about trying to get to where we convert shots and take care of the ball because we know how quick they can come down the opposite direction and convert those into points.

That’a good basketball team, obviously, which I’m not surprised at, even a little bit. I think they’re going to end up having a tremendous season as they go forward in the Big East and nationally. They obviously put a lot of pieces together today.

On Stanley Robinson Obviously Stanley Robinson has begun to assert himself. We really didn’t have any answers for him.

Stanley Robinson

I really wanted to play. You could tell that the other team kind of made me a little mad at first. I had a tech, but I got motivated off of it and just went from there.

I’m pretty active. That’s my game, I’m always active. And I’m a scrappy person. I’m going to always give it 110 percent, regardless. You can always expect that from me. If I score zero points, you’ll still see me all over the court.

Jeff Adrien

It feels great. Knowing that we played the last 2 games real well today was a more physical game and we were able to pick it up and play better. It is a good thing. There were a lot of great things that we got out of this game. There are still a lot of things we have to work on, as in every game that happens all the time. Other than that we played great today we had a lot of people contribute, a lot of people in double figures.

A.J. Price

We are really happy with the way we played the last two games. On the defensive end that’s where we wanted to improve the most and I think we did that. We are going to have to keep that same intensity and everything we did the last 2 game we are going to have to take that with us for the rest of the season, in order to win some big games because it all starts with the defensive end.

On if they are ready to play on the road: Our first road game last year was West Virginia and this young team wasn’t ready for that at all, and almost got thrown into the fire basically…they took care of us. Bu this year we have had some tough games already, although none have been truly road games. But we feel much more equipped as a team unit to go anywhere and play any body tough.

On what it takes to win on the road: It takes heart, leadership it takes a lot of different things and I think we have all of these attributes this year on this team and we will be able to go into a building and win a very tough game. Our first one down in Central Florida is going to be tough, they are opening a new building and we know that so we are going to have to be ready to play.

Hasheem Thabeet

This year we just want to win and we want to put the Connecticut program back where it belongs. We want to go to San Antonio

On the play of Stanley Robinson When he comes out ready to play he can really be effective. Now he realizes that he can be explosive, and he noticed that since Wednesday, he has really been good. He is doing all of the little things that the coaches want him to do. He realizes right now that he can be the best he can be and he is going to take advantage of that.