UConn approaches its favorite game: The last one

Huskies have an affinity for the end of the road, which comes against San Diego State on Monday.

Adama Sanogo

All year, and maybe all career, the Connecticut Huskies have been priming for a moment like this. A trophy in the house and only one more game to win, one more foe to frustrate, one more bell to answer.

When you put this basketball program and the lineage of its coach in that zero-sum situation, there’s only one true outcome. That, along with some obvious physical and skill-related problems, is what San Diego State has to conquer on Monday night when it plays UConn for the men’s NCAA championship in Houston.

The Huskies will be going for their fifth championship since 1999, which would tie Duke and North Carolina for the most since the watershed year of 1975. Danny Hurley would be the third UConn coach to get it, although the architect was Jim Calhoun, who came to rural Connecticut in 1986 and saw the roots of a basketball machine where no one else saw…well, anything.

Calhoun coached and cajoled the Huskies to three NCAA championship games. In 1999 the pre-game talk centered on that particular Duke team’s place in history, but the Huskies changed the subject with a 77-74 upset. Then they won title games over Georgia Tech (82-73) and Butler (53-41). Later, coach Kevin Ollie rode the bravado of Shabazz Napier to Final Four shockers of Florida and Kentucky (60-54). That team was a No. 7 seed.

Along the way the Huskies won with little guys like Napier, Kemba Walker and Khalid el-Amin, and they won with big guys like Emeka Okafor and now Adama Sanogo, who has scored 101 points in 128 minutes and, on Saturday, uncoiled for two 3-pointers, a signal to Miami fans that it might be time to call the airlines.

UConn’s 13-point semfinal win followed a 24-pointer over Iona, a 15-pointer over St. Mary’s, a 23-pointer over Arkansas and a 28-pointer over Gonzaga. Miami’s 59-point output was a season low, but no one in the tournament has scored more than 65 on UConn, which has played Sanogo no more than 27 minutes in any NCAA game becaue of the virtuosity of 7-foot-2 freshman Donovan Clingan.

But the ability to close the deal goes far beyond the university. Hurley’s dad is Bob Hurley, the legendary coach of St. Anthony’s High in Jersey City. He won 28 New Jersey state championships and had 18 undefeated seasons, while pumping out six first-round NBA selections. One of them was Bob Jr., the point guard who was the fulcrum of back-to-back Duke champions in 1991-92.

Bob Jr. coaches Arizona State now and has created respectability and public interest out of basketball hibernation. Danny won an NCAA game in each of his final two years at Rhode Island, and he won 25 games at Wagner before that. He took the UConn job at one of its low points and, in five years, has the Huskies on stage again. And he isn’t pretending to be surprised. As he has repeatedly pointed out, UConn was undefeated against a tough non-Big East schedule, thrashing Alabama by 15, Iowa State by 18, Oklahoma State by 10 and Florida by 21.

It was only in league play that the Huskies struggled, losing five of six at one point and suffering unlikely losses to Seton Hall and St. John’s. Hurley suggested that he was to blame for that, carrying his antipathy toward the officials into practices and games. “I was on the phone to the league office more than I was watching film,” he said.

In any event, this is a punishing tournament run in what was supposed to be a time of equality. Connecticut has trailed for 19 seconds, total, in its past three wins. Its only second-half deficit was a one-pointer to Iona, at halftime, and the Huskies took care of that on the first possession of the second half.

It’s difficult to be more straightforward than a .494 field goal percentage through the five wins, with a .403 mark from the 3-point line, while the victims are shooting .347 and .290. And when all the other options disappear, Sanogo has gone 45 for 66, and he was 9-for-11 against Miami just as he was against Arkansas.

This was supposed to be a year of renewal for college basketball big men, previously marginalized by positionless trends. Sanogo is a 6-foot-9, 240-pound train to the past. He is irresistible in the low post, where he prefers to play, yet he can also step out and pass to cutters. He has played in the touranament while fasting, in deference to Ramadan, and maybe everyone should.

Sanogo comes from Mali, where his father operates car washes and his mother runs a store. Africa, or families of African descent, has supplied much of college basketball with its centers lately, and Sanogo’s journey was typical. He came to a prep school in Centereach, N.Y. with no grasp of the English language, which he has now turned into his fourth. At the Patrick School in New Jersey he played with Jonathan Kuminga, now with the Warriors.

Sanogo’s personality brought him up to speed. His New York Rens AAU coach said that all his teammates wanted to be his roommate. But his businesslike game is what we’re watching now, with little wasted motion. He is the last of many lines of defense for UConn, which plays big wings and believes in pressure throughout the half-court, with a variety of hands drawn toward every dribble.

The percentages say that a downturn is inevitable for UConn, and San Diego State’s depth and muscle could drag the championship game into the mire. The Aztecs are far better offensively than most of Brian Dutcher’s previous teams, and they showed they could peck away at a 14-point deficit against Florida Atlantic Saturday, setting up Lamont Butler’s game-winning shot that might go down as San Diego’s best sports moment. To be sure, that’s like being the top mountain climber in Oklahoma, but it’s something.

So far this has been the spring of Caitlin Clark, as Iowa tries to win the women’s championship Sunday against LSU. Depending on her success there, one men’s team will emerge as her 2023 footnote. It wouldn’t be the first time Connecticut has been overshadowed. Maybe that’s why the Huskies are so emphatic when it’s time to put the pencils down.