RALEIGH, N.C. — Alex Karaban had a reasonably good look at the basket from the left corner. He thought about it — that was his first mistake — and put the ball back down.
As another UConn possession went empty, the tension ratcheted up another notch as Karaban passed coach Dan Hurley on the sidelines, his second mistake. What was the message?
“Shoot the effin; ball,” Hurley said. “No, I’m not sure that was the exact way I should have said it.”
Maybe that was exactly the way it needed to be said. The time and place to hesitate, to overthink, to pass up a good shot in hopes of getting the best one has passed for the UConn men. In a fight for their NCAA Tournament life in the West Regional 8/9 game, this was no time to play it safe. History is never made that way, eras of greatness are not supposed to end that way.
Alex Karaban helps UConn men’s basketball survive No. 9 seed Oklahoma in NCAA Tournament first round, 67-59
“I’m willing to live and die with the consequences of the shots I take,” Karaban said. “We’ve seen that today. I feel like it’s my duty to step up for this team when I have to. … I wasn’t going to make that same mistake again.”
With 3:40 to play against Oklahoma on Friday night, Karaban got another good look. Hassan Diarra got him the ball and he launched the 3-pointer. Shot ready. Dead on. “That one felt good,” he said.
The game was far from over, but it felt like the biggest shot of the night, then and afterward. Karaban added a runner from the lane, a couple of free throws and finished with 13 points and seven rebounds, much of that when the season was hanging in the balance down the stretch. UConn won, 67-59, and lives to fight another day.
“Alex is such a perfectionist and a smart player that like he knows the quality of shots,” Hurley said. “Just with this team and this roster that he has around him, he’s got to take more contested shots. He’s got to let it fly more.
“He probably should have taken 14 shots in this game, and he cannot make that same mistake in the next one. When you play teams at this level, which is the best of the best in the tournament, like the windows are tighter. You’re not going to get the perfect shot.”
This is the legacy of UConn’s two championships: the precision, the set plays so exquisitely run, the unselfishness. It has been, at times, the curse of this longshot quest for a three-peat in 2025. The Huskies still move the ball, but not with the speed and sharpness of the past two seasons, and opponents make everything, including and especially the simple act of getting the ball in play, a struggle. Passing up a good shot has not consistently resulted in getting a great one, but often it has meant throwing up a prayer at the end of the shot clock.
“It’s a different team, different personnel-wise,” Karaban said. “Teams have been watching us the last two years win it all, they’ve seen how talented, how unique our offense is and they’re finding different ways to make us stop with our flow. We’ve seen so many different defenses the entire year, we’ve just got to execute better at certain moments of the game.”
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None of that will matter when UConn (24-10) takes the floor at Lenovo Center Sunday at 12:10 p.m. The top-seed in the West Region, Florida, will be on the floor with them and this is all anyone could have reasonably asked: the road to the Final Four, for at least one of the favorites, will have to go through UConn.
The champs are not done yet. In fact, they’re in the way.
“I think there’s honor in fighting and getting to the round of 32 and making somebody put you down in this tournament,” Hurley said, “to end this run we’ve been on.”
That run has now reach 13 straight tournament wins. The first 12 were by double digits, this latest one was a struggle, “a lot of suffering involved,” Hurley said. UConn led nearly the entire game, played better defense than it has been playing, but was malfunctioning on offense, both teams were. Midway through the second half, the Sooners briefly took the lead and it seemed to be slipping away from the Huskies.
It fell to Karaban, the remaining starter from the championship teams, to make sure didn’t end this way, a one-and-done bow out to the lower seed. His hesitance, his perfectionism, has been maddening at times this season, but it wasn’t, isn’t, too late to shake that off.
“I passed one up in the corner, and everyone told me to shoot that one,” Karaban said. “I thought, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t shoot that one.’ And the next one, I decided I was going to let it fly. I can’t wait for the last five minutes to get myself going and show up.”
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Let it fly would be as good a way as any to couch the necessary approach for the Huskies on Sunday. They will be big underdogs against the Gators (31-4), who won the SEC, from which 14 teams made the tournament, and beat Oklahoma by 22 points during the regular season. The Huskies have absolutely nothing to lose, and no reason to hang their heads if they do. If this is to be the last day of the UConn dynasty, make Florida sweat and earn it the hard way.
… Because dynasties are supposed to die hard.
“That’s important to us,” Karaban said. “We have a lot of pride in this program, we have a lot of honor. We want it to be that way. What we’ve done the last two years is remarkable, it’s unbelievable and its special. And we don’t want to give that up just because …. just because. We look forward to the opportunity.”
Originally Published: March 22, 2025 at 10:54 AM EDT
