For Alex Karaban, UConn, pride showed through pain

INDIANAPOLIS — The end had come, there was no staving it off any longer. Alex Karaban’s last, desperate shot from far back with 17 seconds left was short of the rim, and fell to the floor.

And that’s how it ended, the national championship game on April 6 the ultimate expiration date. Karaban’s four years at UConn, during which he grew from freshman with fledgling social skills to become the winningest player and face of the most successful team in college basketball, ended painfully.

He faced the end, faced down the pain with a fierce pride. There would be no tears this year, he’d fight them back at the podium at Lucas Oil Stadium, and he’d fight them back at his locker before taking off the jersey for the last time. Just the grimace of a grown man suppressing the tears, even a smile breaking through as he thought about all that has happened, all he has done.

“I feel blessed that I’ve been able to wear this jersey for the longest amount of time possible,” Karaban said, following the Huskies’ 69-63 loss to Michigan on Monday night, “the max amount, the max amount of minutes, the max amount of games this season. I came back ultimately to win, fell short. So it hurts right now. It hurts a lot right now. I’m just reminding myself right now that when I came into UConn how much I’ve grown, and I’m ultimately leaving UConn in a better place right now from where I started. I gave it everything I’ve got. I gave it my heart. I gave everything. All I thought about was UConn basketball every single day. For it now, now that I’m leaving and for UConn to be one of the best brands in college basketball and to be at the top, I left it better than when it started. I’m most proud of that.”

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The max amount, right to the last seconds. Coach Dan Hurley determined before the game that, if at all possible, his senior and captain would play the whole 40 minutes. The Huskies went down to defeat against a team that was favored to win, but they went down the way champions and athletic warriors should — they “fell in their shields,” Hurley said, in the last moments of the last possible battle.

“(Karaban) has put UConn in that rarefied place in college basketball,” Hurley said. “Everyone owes everything to that guy, and I figure, let me just play him, let me play him into the ground one more time, just one more 40-minute game for Alex. Let me just play that guy into the ground one more night like I have throughout his career. He deserved to play 40 minutes.”

Michigan (37-3) scored more than 90 points in each of the previous five NCAA Tournament games, blowing everybody out until Hurley’s Huskies forced the Wolverines to play at the pace UConn wanted. They shot 38 percent and scored 69 points, giving UConn a chance. There was a wide discrepancy in fouls called, 22 against UConn to 13, and Michigan made 25 of 28 at the line, UConn 12 of 16. The Huskies had to play long stretches without point guard Silas Demary Jr., who fouled out, center Tarris Reed Jr. and Solo Ball, all in foul trouble. But Hurley did not make a postgame issue of the officiating. The Huskies fought the bigger Wolverines for 22 offensive rebounds, and got off 13 more shots from the floor, 68 to 55, yet made the same number of field goals, 21, and therein hung the defeat.

This is the game, the life, Alex Karaban chose. He went 5-for-14 from the floor, scored 17 points and had 11 rebounds, but sometimes the shots don’t fall. The Huskies missed 12 shots in a row from 3-point range, many of them open looks, and fell 11 points behind in the second half, then just couldn’t catch up. Karaban’s last shot could have made it a one-point game, though, that’s how close the Huskies were to trying for another miracle finish.

“You’ve got to have that level of belief,” Karaban said, “you’ve got to believe in yourself, especially when you’re playing a team like that. If you have 99 percent belief, you don’t win. You’ve got to have 100 percent belief and do everything in your power to help win.”

Karaban’s four years at UConn were about 100 percent belief, in his coach, in the teammates who helped win championships his first two years and get so close to a third. The goals were great, off-the-charts. Not since the 1970s has any player played on three championship teams, and Karaban needed only one win to do it.

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That Karaban did not get there will, in time, become irrelevant. That he came so close, returned to college for third and fourth years rather than take his chances with the NBA Draft, and spent himself so completely in the quest for title No. 3 will make him a Huskies icon.

“He made me grow as a person, as a player,” said freshman Braylon Mullins, whose winning shot against Duke vaulted the Huskies back to the Final Four. “He’s basically another coach on the floor. To learn how he operates on the floor, taking that for myself, it made me a better player. I can’t thank him enough. He’s a special person.”

Mullins was emotional and a few tears dampened his cheeks. The older guys held it together, barely.

“I might cry up here just talking about just the impact he’s had,” Solo Ball said, “in the locker room, throughout every single practice, every single game. He’s just always there, and he’s the same person every single day. He doesn’t change. Incredibly smart, great guy off the court. I’m going to miss this guy so much. He’s going to make so much noise, and I know he’s deserving of everything that’s coming his way because of how hard he works.”

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And Reed: “He’s like the most passionate, competitive, loyal person I’ve ever met. Just the love he has for the game, the love he has for us, just a leader. I’ve never met a person like AK that shows up every day despite good game, bad game, bad day, good day. Getting yelled at by Coach, getting yelled at by us. But he’s an everyday guy, honest guy who’s going to show up whenever for his team. Like it showed tonight. He gave it his all and just a true heart of a champion.”

Now, the NBA team willing to forget he is 23, and not 19 or 21, and give him a chance will get the best version of Alex Karaban, he said. When the Huskies were eliminated by Florida a year ago, a tearful Karaban said he didn’t want to take the jersey off. He had to take it off for good on Monday night, but the U-C-O-N-N and No. 11 will somehow remain underneath. He won’t have three championship rings to show for four years at UConn, where he arrived a shy kid from Central Mass., and walked out of the arena for the last time as a grown man. The end had come, the last ounce of effort expended, and the pride was slowly overtaking the pain.

“I care about winning; I have done everything in my power to help this program win,” Karaban said. “I want to do everything every time I step out at night and give it my all. For Coach to play me 40 minutes, I can’t thank him enough. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I wanted, is to give everything I got, leave everything I’ve got out there and try to do everything to help us win.”