SUPER BOWL 2012

All the New York City pickpockets working their craft a few blocks away in Times Square were upstaged by a kid from Boston on Wednesday afternoon.

Shabazz Napier stole the show – quite literally – in UConn’s latest how-did-that-happen, Big East tournament win at Madison Square Garden. The sophomore point guard went on a personal 9-0 run – paced by a pair of crafty steals – over an 87-second span late in regulation to tie the game, and his teammates survived without him after he fouled out in overtime.

Jeremy Lamb’s 3-pointer with a little over a minute left in the extra period put the Huskies ahead for good in a 71-67 victory that ousted West Virginia from its final Big East tourney appearance and set up UConn’s third matchup with Syracuse in the past month.

It also essentially clinched a return trip to the NCAA tournament for the defending champions, who are now 20-12 overall.

With less than four minutes left in regulation on Wednesday, however, it appeared the Huskies might not have that chance. The Mountaineers led by nine (63-54) after a Darryl “Truck” Bryant inside bucket with three minutes, 57 seconds left. Napier, however, wasn’t dismayed, and assured his teammates as much at the time.

“I knew we were going to win,” he said. “It’s weird, you just have that instinct, that feeling … I told Alex (Oriakhi), ‘We’re going to win this game.’ I just felt that. When you feel something, you’ve got to go with it.”

Did he ever. Napier canned a 3-pointer, Bryant missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Napier hit a pair of free throws. Then, he swiped a Dominique Rutledge pass near midcourt and cruised in for a finger roll. After a West Virginia timeout, he picked Gary Browne’s pocket off an inbounds pass and again sailed in for a layup, tying the score with 2:10 left.

“One of them, I kind of gambled on,” said Napier. “I just felt like Rutledge was going to be lazy on the pass to Browne, and I just went for it and stole it. And one time, Browne thought I was going to stay with Bryant, and I just came from behind and stole it. Sometimes, you’ve got to take those risks and hope for the best.”

Browne countered with a lane jumper, but UConn got the ball up the floor quickly and Drummond ank a short baseline jumper. Browne turned the tables on Napier by stealing the ball form him near midcourt with 42.2 seconds left, but Andre Drummond blocked a Rutledge shot, Napier missed an 18-footer at the buzzer, and it was on to overtime.

Napier scored the first points of the extra period with a pair of free throws, but wound up picking his fourth and fifth fouls in the span of 24 seconds. Bryant hit a pair of freebies to tie it, but Lamb canned his wing trey to put the Huskies ahead for good.

“I knew we needed a score,” Lamb said, “and in the game (Tuesday), Coach told me to shoot and I didn’t take a shot. Coach was just saying, “I want you shooting the ball.’ So today, they ran a play for me, set great screens, and I was able to get wide open. I had a little time to set my feet and I just shot it with confidence, and thank God it went in.”

It wasn’t over yet, as Ryan Boatright missed three straight free throws within the final 33 seconds. But he finally hit the fourth with 19.2 seconds left, and West Virginia couldn’t score again.

"Boat is always there for us," said Napier. "Go back to the first game he came and knocked down three free throws we needed (to beat) Florida State. That's what he gives you, he gives you a lot of heart no matter what."

The Mountaineers missed all 11 of their field goal attempts in overtime.

“I couldn’t be prouder of our kids,” said coach Jim Calhoun. “I think for a team that obviously has had its ups and downs – no coach, no Boatright, all the various things that have happened to us – those are things that happen and they happen to other teams. But I can only judge my family, my guys, and my guys have come back, won three in a row, and I truly believe that a coach couldn’t be prouder.”

Napier scored 22 of his 26 points in the second half and overtime. Lamb added 22 – 12 in the first 12 minutes of play – and Boatright had 10 off the bench. Napier also had six assists, four turnovers and three blocks (!).

*** UConn-Syracuse. Madison Square Garden. Big East tournament. Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

Not in recent years, anyway.

The last four times these two powerhouse rivals have met in the Big East tournament, three have been decided in overtime. Among those, of course, was the classic six-overtime battle in 2009 eventually won in the wee hours of the morning by the Orange, 127-117.

More recently, Syracuse has beaten the Huskies twice over the last month, pulling away in the final minutes at the Carrier Dome for an 85-67 win on Feb. 11, then eking out a 71-69 triumph two weeks later in Storrs. Calhoun was on medical leave and not on the sidelines for either game, but he’ll be there for Thursday’s noon quarterfinal-round battle.

“We’re playing, in my opinion – along with Kentucky – the best team in the country (Thursday),” he said after UConn’s 71-67, second-round win over West Virginia.

The old adage says it’s hard for a good team to beat another good team three times in a row. Throw in the fact that the second-ranked Orange are a sure-shot No. 1 NCAA tourney seed with nothing to play for, while the Huskies have momentum, and it’s understandable why Drummond promised: “It’s going to be hard for (Syracuse), I can tell you that now. We’re going to come out with fire.”

Added Lamb: “We’ve just got to come out strong. When we played them at home, we didn’t start off (well). We’ve got to come out as hard as we can.”

*** Despite the victory, UConn had to be concerned about its rebounding – or lack thereof – on Wednesday. The Huskies were outrebounded, 47-31. Worse, they allowed a whopping 26 offensive boards to the Mountaineers.

Strangely, Calhoun wasn’t overly concerned.

“You also remember that six or seven of (the offensive boards) are blocked shots,” he pointed out. “They seemed to get every blocked shot that we had. Not that it’s misleading, but we played defense a little bit different than maybe some other teams, and down the stretch it did help since we blocked two of their layups.”

Calhoun was particularly happy with the defensive play late in the game of Drummond, who blocked Dominique Rutledge’s potential game-winner in the final seconds of regulation.

Drummond also locked down WVU star Kevin Jones late in the game. Jones dominated much of the game from both the inside and outside and finished with 25 points. However, following a pair of free throws with 6:17 left in regulation, he didn’t score again.


Said Huggins: “Well, it’s been a good run. We’ve enjoyed it, most of it anyway. I mean, there’s nothing like coming to the Garden to play in the tournament.”
West Virginia finishes 12-15 all-time in Big East tourney games, winning the title in 2010 and reaching the finals twice.

The Big East announced on Wednesday that Temple will officially be joining the conference, for football only in 2012 and all other sports in 2013.

“I always thought Temple would be a great addition, being in Philadelphia,” Calhoun said. “They’ve got a tremendous coach, it’s a great city for basketball.”

Calhoun couldn't resist a chance to needle longtime rival Rick Pitino, who has been publicly campaigning for the Owls to join the Big East for a while now.

"I can't get a word in edgewise with Rick praising Temple," Calhoun quipped. "That's not against Rick. I don't Twitter or Tweet or any of those things. You know what I'm talking about."

*** Lamb has hit double figures in all seven of his career Big East tourney games.

*** UConn has won 13 straight postseason games and seven straight in the Big East tourney, tying Georgetown for third-longest winning streak in the event's history.

Jim Calhoun was in a relatively good mood after UConn's win over West Virginia Monday night. Predictably, Bob Huggins wasn't.

Also, Ryan Boatright talks about the ... ahem ... conversation that Jim Calhoun had with him at midcourt on Monday, as well as his big steal.

I'm not fully prepared to credit Jim Calhoun's technical foul for UConn's renewed vigor and intensity over the final 11 minutes or so Monday night.

Several players, after all, said they didn't even know Calhoun had been slapped with a 'T' by Pat Driscoll after arguing an Andre Drummond over-the-back foul during a timeout.

"We didn't even pay attention," claimed Ryan Boatright.

But some inspired talk by Calhoun at some point after that 'T' certainly did seem to light a fire under the Huskies, who suddenly started to rebound and defend with urgency. Drummond and Jeremy Lamb stepped up big-time, an effective zone press certainly helped as well, and UConn rallied to victory.

“I told them, ‘If we’re not going to fight, they might throw me out of here, but I’m going to fight,’” Calhoun said. “(The technical) wasn’t planned, but we just couldn’t keep them going the way we were going.”

Added Boatright: "Coach has got our back, he’s on the refs. If he sees something going on, he tells us not to say anything to the refs and he’ll take care of it.”

Ah, Boatright. A real trick-or-treat player, someone who is going to draw Calhoun's ire quite a bit over the next few years. He certainly did on Monday. With about 14 1/2 minutes left and UConn trailing by five, Boatright threw an inbounds pass over Tyler Olander's head that went out-of-bounds. The freshman seemed to be upset at Olander, and Calhoun yelled from the sidelines, "Don't blame your teammate!"

Boatright appeared to say something back, and Calhoun soon called a timeout, raced out to near midcourt and started screaming right in Boatright's grill.

“I don’t even really remember what he said," Boatright recalled. "It was just the heat of the moment. Coach is going to be Coach. That’s what he does all the time. He does it to everybody. I made a mistake, and you’ve just got to be culpable and be able to play through it.”

Indeed, Boatright later had one of the plays of the night when he stole the ball at midcourt and flew in for a dunk that tied the score at 48 and put a huge charge in the near-sellout crowd of 15,805.

“I just played ‘D’, like I always try to do – stay in front and not gamble," Boatright said. "Coach has been preaching to us not to gamble. He lost it by himself, he gave it to me, and once I got the steal, I was preparing for the contact. I thought he was going to jump and I just went up strong and tried to dunk it, and I got up high enough. That definitely fired the crowd up and fired the crowd up.”

Oh, and about that crowd -- Calhoun has rarely heaped so much praise on an XL Center gathering (even if it was a snooch short of a sellout).

“The crowd was more than special," the coach said. "We were down eight, we cut it to six and I thought we went ahead by four … just by the way the crowd reacted. In the past, we’ve had crowds waiting for us to do things … "

*** Andre Drummond was immense, particularly in the latter half. He followed Lamb in the scoring column with 20 points while also hauling in a game-high 11 rebounds and three blocks – including a Darryl Bryant 3-point attempt in the waning seconds that sealed the deal.


“Andre Drummond was special tonight,” said Calhoun. “He hasn’t been special all season – he’s been good – as you would expect from a freshman. But tonight, he was special.”

Drummond’s biggest play of the night came with 1:27 left and the Huskies clinging to a one-point (58-57) lead. Lamb misfired on a 3-pointer, but Drummond grabbed the rebound and hit a short baseline jumper – one of several such shots he made throughout the night in between rafter-shaking dunks.

I also thought Drummond did a decent job on Jones, the Big East scoring and rebounding leader who finished with 22 points but just five rebounds -- by far his lowest total of the season.

Jones, a 6-8 forward, is a tough guard for Drummond when he steps out to shoot the 3. He buried a trio of treys in the first half but none the rest of the way.

“I think I did a pretty good job of keeping him off the boards," Drummond said. "That’s what he really feeds off of, rebounds to get his points. I slipped up a little bit near the end of the half, letting him get three quick rebounds. Coach said you’ve got to stop letting him to that.”

WVU missed all 10 of its 3-point attempts in the latter half.

*** UConn didn't grab its first offensive rebound until late in the game, though it finished with six.

“I thought we might set the all-time record without getting an offensive rebound," Calhoun quipped afterwards.

He can quip about this after a win. Had UConn lost ... not so much.

*** Neither Drummond's 20 points or 11 boards were career-bests, but he matched his career-high with four fouls. He's starting to learn what Big East refs are going to call.

“Yeah, I mean, they were killing me," he said. "But they were great refs, man. I’m not going to complain or say anything bad, because they’re good refs. I did something wrong and they called it. I’m not going to argue with them. They’re the higher power, so, it was a good call by them.”

*** Bob Huggins didn't seem quite as enamored by the officiating crew.

"There's some things I'd like to say about that, but I can't, y'know what I mean?" he said, in reference to a fourth foul call on Deniz Kilicli.

*** Hate to nitpick, but UConn is really getting very little out of its small forwards -- DeAndre Daniels, Roscoe Smith and now Niels Giffey, who has yet to score a field goal in his two starts the last two games.

I think that's all I've got for now.

I’m not a big Bob Huggins fan. I’ve seen him behave far too boorishly with the media over the years. Tries to be too much of a bully, if you ask me.

But there’s no denying he’s an excellent basketball coach, as evidenced by his 703 career wins. Which raises the question: Why doesn’t Huggy Bear get more respect as a coach?

I don’t recall much of any fanfare surrounding Huggins’ 700th win, achieved a few days before practice. Only 19 other coaches have won more games than him, and only three of them active – Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun. Huggins recently passed Denny Crum for 20th on the all-time list, but I remember Crum being a much bigger name in the coaching world than Huggins ever has been.

Then again, Crum won two national championships. Huggins has zero, with two trips to the Final Four and none to the national championship game.

Maybe I just answered my own question.

But here’s something else to consider: At age 58, Huggins would seem to have plenty of more years left as a coach. A lot could happen between now and then, of course, but if Huggins gets in 10 more years and averages 20 per year, we could be talking 900 wins – something only two coaches (Coach K and Bob Knight) have achieved to this point.

*** Bit of a different vantage point for me tonight, and from here on out, for games at the XL Center. Press seating has been scattered all about, with my seat moving from just a bit past midcourt across from the visitors’ bench to near the far corner, across from UConn’s bench. Not a bad vantage point. Certainly better than along the baseline, where we have to sit at Syracuse, Seton Hall, Georgetown, Pitt, DePaul, etc. Hard to get a good feel for the game from those seats.

There is no reason for you to care about where the media is sitting, of course, except for this: the reason for the move is that there are now high-priced, courtside seats for the well-heeled where much of press row used to be. More money into the program can only be good for UConn and its fans (if not so much for the media covering the game).

*** Celtics GM Danny Ainge is among the 11 NBA scouts/GM’s, etc. expected at tonight’s game.