The UConn men’s basketball team was leading DePaul by 21 points with four and a half minutes left on Saturday when Dan Hurley decided to start taking his starters out. It was a 20-point lead when the full starting five took a seat with 2:29 on the clock.
Only a minute went by before the lead was cut to 16 with an uncontested alley-oop dunk in transition and Hurley had seen enough, choosing to bring his starters back in for a 40-second stretch. They came back out 40 seconds later and DePaul scored five straight to close the game on an 11-1 run, nearly cutting the Huskies’ margin of victory in half.
“I was tight with the rotation at Providence, so I kind of buried the bench guys there and I wanted to play them more tonight, so it felt like a good time to play them. They needed those minutes,” Hurley said. “Obviously having to put the starters back in, it was disappointing. I didn’t like how they handled that, that (bench) group. That was (expletive).”
Aside from Jaylin Stewart, who was plus-18 in the overtime comeback victory at Providence and played 27 minutes in place of a struggling Solo Ball, the bench unit was virtually ineffective. Without Stewart’s big 3-pointer at the start of the rally to tie the game late in regulation, the Huskies would’ve had no bench points. They had 12 on Saturday, with six coming from freshman center Eric Reibe, who played well at the start of the second half.
“I have full faith in the bench and our role players just knowing that any given night, there’s been so many games where Stewie saved us, Eric saved us, Malachi (Smith) saved us, J-Ross, like all of those guys have helped us win games already so I have full faith in them,” captain Alex Karaban said. “They’re going to respond the right way. Coach will send a message and they’re gonna learn from it and respond in the right way that they typically have throughout the entire season. The depth is the key to our team.”
Hurley’s decision to pull them back off the court for those 40 seconds wasn’t about preserving margin of victory or protecting metrics as much as it was a message about the intensity and focus he demands out of his team to close games.
The immediate returns in updated rankings don’t reflect much difference between a 21-point win and a 12-point win. UConn dropped one spot on KenPom to No. 9 and held its position at No. 8 in the updated NET rankings on Sunday morning.
“It was more just disappointment with that group because, for me at the end, I don’t give a (bleep) about the NET (rankings). We’re 16-1, what we did in the nonconference speaks for itself, I don’t care if we drop a spot in the NET, that’s (expletive),” Hurley said. “So much in the NET right now, it’s bad. I just, I don’t want to have a starter get hurt, I feel like we’ve got a strong bench. I felt like the bench could keep the score where it was, I didn’t want to put the starters back in and I certainly wasn’t trying to like sub guys out early on DePaul, I’ve got tremendous respect for them. I just, you’re up 23 or whatever, and I just felt like we’d be able to hold the lead and get guys minutes that didn’t get them versus Providence. But they did bad.”
Offensive efficiency rankings still have room to rise
UConn’s 2023 national championship team was No. 3 in offensive efficiency and No. 7 on defense. The 2024 team was even better with the No. 1 offense and No. 4 defense. Before this season, Hurley said the 2026 team has a chance to get back into the top-10 on both ends of the floor.
So far, the defense has climbed up to No. 5 in efficiency nationally, holding opponents to an effective field goal percentage of 43.4% (No. 5) with a 15.8% block percentage (No. 10). But the offensive rating, No. 26 in efficiency, is still coming along.
The Huskies are No. 125 in turnover percentage (16.4%) and No. 102 in offensive rebound percentage (33.8%).
“I think you’re seeing it go up as Silas (Demary Jr.) is getting more comfortable. We had 14 turnovers again tonight, that has hurt us. There’s all of these different things that go into your offensive efficiency that don’t actually have anything to do with what you’re doing in the half court in terms of like, scoring off of something you’re running,” Hurley said. “We don’t offensive rebound the way that we need to. We turn the ball over at a rate that is way too high. We’re not getting out in transition enough, when we’re in transition we’re not as efficient as we need to be.”
