No. 2 UConn men’s basketball returns to action after healthy break to host Villanova: What to know

STORRS – The UConn men’s basketball team used its short break, a much-needed one, to rest both physically and mentally while getting in some extra preparation for Saturday’s game against Villanova, which begins a tougher part of the Big East schedule.

Year one has been a success so far for Kevin Willard, the former Seton Hall and Maryland coach, who used the transfer portal to build a roster that is competing toward the top of the league.

The Wildcats, who lost their opener by just five to BYU and beat Wisconsin in overtime to finish nonconference play, are 15-4 overall and 6-2 in the Big East. They will be UConn’s first matchup against a current top four team in the league standings this season, with trips to Creighton and St. John’s approaching in the next two weeks.

“The conference games, they feel so difficult because everyone knows you so well and because of the way the games are stacked, they all feel like they’re really challenging. But yeah, when you watch better teams play on film, they’re generally gonna be better on offense, better on defense, better personnel. And you could see that with Villanova,” coach Dan Hurley said after Friday’s practice.

Villanova has the league’s 3-point leader in Bryce Lindsay, a James Madison transfer shooting 40% from beyond the arc. It has a 6-foot-10 forward in Duke Brennan who is averaging a double-double with 12.1 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. Then there’s a 35.1% 3-point shooter who can fill up the scoring column and take the ball away in Tyler Perkins (12.3 points per game), and a sixth-year point guard coming off the bench in Devin Askew, who is at his fifth school since he was a top-30 player in the 2020 high school class.

That is without mentioning Acaden Lewis, a top-50 recruit who the Huskies pursued hard before he chose Kentucky, then decommitted and decided on Villanova. The 6-2 combo guard is averaging 12.3 points, 5.2 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 1.9 steals per game and making a strong case in the Big East Freshman of the Year race.

“You see what he’s doing out there, he’s a fun player to watch,” Hurley said. “The game comes so easy to him, he’s got a genius with the ball out there. We’ve just got to make it as tough on him as we can, we’re trying to mix things up with what he sees defensively in the ball screen game because … he’s clearly gonna be a first-round pick at some point.”

That freshman of the year race, which has been won by UConn’s Stephon Castle and Liam McNeeley the last two years, figures to be a lot more competitive this time around with Braylon Mullins and Providence’s Jamier Jones also making strong cases, among others.

Mullins has started to come into his own with the Huskies being tested recently. UConn played five games in 13 days leading into its break with three decided by five points or fewer.

Hurley is still looking for violence, toughness and a killer instinct out of his group, which has yet to reach its potential on offense.

That starts with the big men down low. Hurley described Brennan, who played his freshman year for Bobby Hurley at Arizona State, as an “ass-kicker,” and he needs Tarris Reed Jr. to match the level of intensity.

“As a team, we need to get a lot meaner. I think we need to play with more violence, we need to play with more nasty edge, we need to play with more of a killer instinct,” Hurley said. “We’ve got great guys in the program, I think we’ve got a great culture, the only downside of that is you wish you had people that had an alter ego when the game’s started and they become a little bit more killers.”

“I feel like it starts with me and Silas (Demary Jr.), the point guard and the center, and I’ve got to take a lot of responsibility on my shoulders,” Reed said. “That goes with the killer instinct, putting teams away. So (Saturday) is a great opportunity versus a great Villanova squad to really show we can do it.”

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Unanswered calls

Hurley was going to call his friend, Alabama coach Nate Oats, before he posted a clip from the movie, “Back to School,” as a reaction to the Crimson Tide challenging the NCAA by bringing in G League player Charles Bediako. But then his superstition stopped him.

“I actually called him before I did the tweet because I wanted to let him know like, ‘This isn’t directed at you, I’m just trying to make light of the whole situation.’ But then I realized I hadn’t talked to him since we’ve been on a winning streak, so I just hung up the phone. Then he called me back and I didn’t answer it,” Hurley said, noting that Alabama assistant Preston Murphy reached out to Kimani Young after the fact.

“Nate’s one of the best coaches and a good friend. It’s a (bleep) show. We’ve got, obviously, just a lot of issues and everyone that pretends, because that’s the position that they took, that everything is going well and this is normal, that’s just … What are we doing?

“We’re just going to do the things we do here at UConn the way that we do them, the way that we want to build a program. We want to recruit high school players, develop them, keep them, and then go in the portal and do what we do there. We’re going to just keep doing what we’re doing and if at some point the sport has changed so much that you can’t be effective doing it that way, either I’ll get out of college coaching or, I don’t know.”

What to know

Site: PeoplesBank Arena, Hartford

Time: 12:30 p.m.

Records: No. 2 UConn: 18-1 (8-0 Big East), Villanova: 15-4 (6-2)

Series: Villanova leads, 40-38.

Last meeting: March 13, 2025 – UConn 73, Villanova 56 in the Big East Tournament quarterfinal

TV: FOX – Alex Faust, Nick Bahe

Radio: UConn Sports Network on FOX Sports Radio 97-9 – Mike Crispino, Wayne Norman