Connecticut bidden for the NCAA tournament with three peat. Can he find March Madness Magic in time?

The quest for the history of university basketball has gone south to Hawaii.

In November, Connecticut lost three times in as many games in the Maui Invitational High Level – against Memphis, Colorado and Dayton – in an overview of a season filled with adversity that tested and taxed the two defendant national champions.

“This year, our confidence passed so early in Maui, you know, I had to build this team,” said coach Dan Hurley in February.

Perhaps the intimidating responsibility to replace one of the best teams in the extended era of the NCAA male tournament was too much for the Huskies. Perhaps the pressure of becoming the first champions of three times since John Wooden’s UCLA in the 1970s pulled and shot Hurley and the Huskies to the point where, like an exaggerated elastic, they are unable to find the shape that made them an unstoppable juggernaut.

Time is exhausted to run things: Uconn between the quarter -finals on Thursday of the Big East tournament against Villanova with a narrowed track to March Madness, and it becomes more difficult to envisage how the Huskies return the change in time to make history throughout the regular season.

“I realized that I could not train this team as hard as I led to some of my other teams,” said Hurley. “I do not think that none of us was prepared for the level of control throughout the year which has succeeded in the success that we have known in the past two years. I think it was heavy for all of us.

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Among the factors that have influenced this year from top to bottom, none is more looming than the talented exodus that left campus after last season.

The All-America Center Donovan Clingan and goalkeeper Stephon Castle said for the NBA draft. The Senior Gares Sad Newton and Cam Spencer have graduated. This left the Huskies with a single return, the junior striker Alex Karaban, and two other players who have an average of more than nine minutes per game in the rescue center Samson Johnson and the solo ball of the rescue guard.

With the additional burden of being the leader, Karaban’s game has flattened – it pulls worse on the field overall, from Deep and the Line – while Ball played a much more important role, marking a 14.8 point per game summit. The first year five -year -old striker Liam McNeeley has an average of 14.7 points per game, but fought against injuries and drew just 39.5% from the field.

But a closer look at the Huskies season reveals several inherent defects: the poor leader, an inability to control turnover, a measurably lower defense, a depth unworthy of confidence and an absence of the killer instinct which came to define the last two national champions.

“We have too many faults,” said Hurley after the defeat of 89-75 of last month against St. John’s at Madison Square Garden. “Obviously, our quality is far from what it was for various reasons.”

The low production of the team to the leader is visible most clearly in the two defeats against the Red Storm, which harassed the Huskies twice in submission to the rapid control of the Big East control in the second season of the coach Rick Pitino.

Senior of a fifth year which has played 76 games in the past two years, Hassan Diarra has struggled in the transition to the starting program due in part to a persistent knee injury that worsened during the conference game. Without safeguarding option – The first year Ahmad Nowell treated an ankle injury and the transfer of Saint Mary Aidan Mahaney was not up to expectations – Hurley continued to rely on Diarra, which marked two figures three times and has an average of three turnarounds per game since early February.

The unreliable leader’s game is the main culprit for a drastic drop in efficiency by possession. The team of last year ran 13th in the country in turnover per game and 120th on the sidelines of turnover; The team of this year fell to 147th at the national level in turnover and the 259th on the sidelines of turnover.

These gifts weakened the defense of the Huskies, which fell to 68th in Division I in points authorized per game despite leading the country in blocks per game. Although the impact of the two clinical ends was impossible to replace, Hurley tinkered a value of the before Johnson area and the transfer of Michigan, Tarris Reed Jr., one of the four players on average two -digit in the score.

“For us this year, with our defense, we cannot take everything,” he said.

Without the main balloon manager, the offensive is systematically bogged down in semi-over and is unable to capitalize on rapid rupture opportunities. UCONN ranks 203rd at the national level and sixth in the Big East with only 9.2 fast rupture points per game.

These problems combined to form a team that made a hiccup during the regular season with adjustments and departures, undervaluating the extended expanses of solid play with strong with losses in Maui and during the conference game in Villanova and Seton Hall.

“For this year, most of our losses were only atrocious losses,” said Hurley.

The possibility that Uconn takes up the form of last year always seems within its reach, even if this faith continues in the potential of Huskies has much more to do with the past than the present. Uconn has not lost a tournament match for two years; The team of last year reduced the Nets at the end of the race for the most dominant season since the expansion since the expansion four decades ago. It is clearly a very different team.

However, the Huskies won eight games in a row by leaving Maui’s trip, including victories against potential tournament teams in Baylor, Texas, Gonzaga and Xavier. Overall, they have five quad 1 victories, as much as possible in the Big East. And Uconn is currently on a sequence of four-game victories, underlined by the loss of Marquette, to enter the Big East tournament at 22-9 in total, 14-6 at a conference and at the time of a seeded N ° 6 in the NCAA field with a race for the championship match on Saturday.

Could Huskies become hot at the right time and revive a race to a historic quarter?

“This is probably the best we have felt all year round,” said Hurley after a Deton Hall 81-50 rout to end the regular season. “And it’s Mars, and Uconn has a big story in March, it’s part of our confidence.”

This article originally appeared on USA Today: Connecticut path to ncaa tournament three-peat was bumpy