The UConn Huskies suffered a rare home loss to the Creighton Blue Jays Saturday afternoon 68-83. Creighton was in big need of a win at a pivotal moment in their season, while UConn suffered their second loss in the last three games.
The reigning National Champions appear to be in trouble as a Blue Jays team that has had its struggles, gave them a great game. Even with arguably the best home crowd in all of the Big East, Uconn could just not faze Creighton whatsoever. The Blue Jays got out to a 35-28 lead at halftime, and despite great efforts by UConn to take that lead back, Creighton just found a way to hold on and hand the Huskies their fifth loss of the year.
The officials will get some blame from the Huskies faithful after a foul by Steven Ashworth looked like it should have led to a shooting foul. But Hassan Diarra was not awarded his three free throws.
However, there were plenty of other reasons why UConn lost this game, and these are those takeaways from the loss.
Rebounds were an issue for the Huskies.
Usually when you only lose the rebounding battle 28-25, a three -board margin, there are not too many complaints there. But for a UConn team that is hoping for a threepeat, this is not the rebounding they have had in the past.
Samson Johnson does not have the size that other big men in the past had, and Tarris Reed Jr. has not gotten the same minutes so this team has been a bit undersized. This made it tough to match up against Ryan Kalkbrenner, who finished with 10 rebounds and 16 points to add in scoring-wise.
Steven Ashworth also had an outstanding game, but seeing a guard grab six rebounds can be easily attributed to effort. The Huskies will need their guards to step up and assist in the rebounding department, especially when Johnson is having to keep up with a superstar big man.
Inside defense allowed plenty of Creighton baskets
When you go against a team like Creighton who loves to shoot threes, and is also great at knocking them down, you have to play a bit softer inside. The Blue Jays though, they recognized this, and Ashworth was able to facilitate quite well in this game.
Kalkbrenner and Jamiya Neal who finished with 24, did a great job cutting to the basket and creating opportunities for scoring chances. While Creighton has had its moments where they struggle to create off the dribble, a game like this is the offense that the Blue Jays need to play if they want to grab an at-large bid.
Whether they need to bring help inside or simply play better with their paint protection, this was a huge reason why they lost this game. Dan Hurley will have some film to watch in this department as they look to Butler.
Unnecessary fouls got the best of them
When you talk about UConn you cannot help but mention the antics and firey nature of Coach Hurley. Officials are always in for a bit of yelling and screaming, and he did have his moments today.
However, in a game where the Huskies committed 17 fouls, even he had no choice sometimes but to understand it was a mistake by his team. UConn had 17 personal fouls while the Blue Jays only had eight. Many will point at this and think the officials had it out for UConn, but there were plenty of unnecessary fouls, especially late in the game.
UConn will have to clean their defensive play up if they want to make a deep run in March. The reason for these fouls can be attributed back to that inside defense, getting beat inside can lead to those fouls as you try to make up ground.
UConn still only has five losses on the year, but there are clear aspects of the game they need to work on to achieve their larger goal. The Huskies stay at home as they take on Butler, and if we know anything about a Hurley-coached team, expect a great performance out of them in that one.