UConn's fear factor starts with Clingan
A stunning 30-0 run puts Illinois away and returns the champs to the Final Four.
Connecticut did not win the NCAA tournament on Saturday. It did guzzle Champaign.
It reduced Illinois, the Big 10 tournament champion and the Division I leader in offense, to a bubbly puddle in Boston. It turned a fairly interesting 23-23 deadlock into a 53-23 scrimmage. Thirty unanswered points, in a Final Eight game? Yes, that’s correct. It was nothing less than a grape-stomping, 77–52, and UConn becomes the first national champ to make it back to the next Final Four since Florida in 2007. Florida is also the last team to win two consecutive titles.
“We know it’s not normal to go back to back,” said Alex Karaban, the power forward who connects the dots. “But there’s not a single normal person in that locker room.”
It isn’t normal to destroy a Top Ten team when you shoot 3 for 17 from the 3-point line, either. But it’s been a while since there’s been such a chasm between the No. 1 team in college basketball and all the others.
There will be plenty of time to compare and contrast this UConn team with that Florida team and also the Duke repeaters of 1991-92. And, of course, there are no guarantees. One remembers 1999, when the hoop intelligentsia was trying to decide whether those particular Blue Devils were just the best college team of all time or the best team of any sport at any time. Those discussions went poof when Connecticut upset Duke in the Finals. Since then the Huskies have won four more titles, which is why coach Dan Hurley, one of the better phrasemakers in his profession, keeps saying, “This group wants to make history in a place where it’s hard to do that.”
Hurley wasn’t quite as circumspect when the Huskies were celebrating on Saturday. He was literally beating his chest and yelling, “Cling Kong!” His sophomore center, the 7-foot-2 Donovan Clingan, might as well have been standing atop the Empire State Building. He scored whenever he felt like it, he was fly-swatting the Illini’s shots, making the shooters assume yoga positions just to get their shots off, and frowning several others into harmless areas. Clingan had 22 points, 10 rebounds, five blocks and three steals, he triggered approximately 45 nightmares, and he made nine of 13 shots. Pretty good game. Imagine if he had played more than 22 minutes.
All told, Illinois was blanked for 9:08, beginning with 1:49 on the clock at the end of the first half. It was 0-for-17 in that stretch. “You look up, and you’re still at 23,” said Coleman Hawkins who, at 6-foot-10 and 225, was giving up four inches and approximately 70 pounds to Clingan in the post.
Bob Hurley, Danny’s dad and one of the most accomplished high school coaches in history, likened the second half to one of his own practices. “It was like when the first team is on defense and the second team is on offense and they just keep getting the ball and fast breaking,” he said. “And Clingan was Bill Walton-esque, with his effect on the game tonight.’
Terrence Shannon Jr. came into Saturday as the most kinetic player in the tournament, with a 31.8-point average in his past five games. He left with eight points on 2 for 12 shooting, with Stephon Castle pestering him high and with Clingan glowering in the lane. The Illini had not lost a game more than nine points all season and were 10-1 since Feb. 21. It was the type of team that UConn supposedly hadn’t encountered. In the end, it had a lot in common with most of those UConn opponents. All of them, eventually, wear Clingan’s size-18 footprints on their heads.
Clingan was the best high school player in Connecticut while at Bristol Central, not far from ESPN headquarters. He was recruited hard by Michigan. There was little warning that UConn was going to perch on skyscrapers. The program was getting re-oriented to the Big East. Only two years ago the Huskies lost to New Mexico State in the first round of the NCAAs. But two things became apparent. Clingan was almost obsessive in his urge to get better, especially in the way he was the first guy at practices and meetings. And even though he had noticeable ball skills, he wanted to play in a 7-foot-2 man’s natural habitat. His castle was the low post.
Clingan backed up Adama Sanogo in the pivot last season. Even this year, he has only played 30 or more minutes in two games. But he blocked eight Northwestern shots in the round of 32 last weekend, and it’s hard to see any Final Four coach borrowing the playbook of Illinois coach Brad Underwood, who tried to challenge Clingan one-on-one inside, without putting him in screen rolls or making him move out of his nest. The Illini scored but 14 points in the 22 minutes Clingan played, and missed 22 of 30 layups.
Clingan’s true motivator is no longer here. Stacey Porrini was a swimmer who took up basketball late at Bristol Central. She grasped it quickly, going to the U. of Maine and becoming one of the school’s top rebounders. She was 6-foot-4 and married Bill Clingan, who was 6-foot-5. She told young Donovan to brush up on his free-throwing, because she knew he’d be big. It’s an ongoing project, since Clingan only shoots them at a 57.4 percent clip, but UConn games rarely come down to that.
Stacey learned she had cancer in 2010. She passed in 2018, when Donovan was in the eighth grade. According to ESPN.com, Donovan braved the grief long enough to ask if it would be OK to put “Free throws win ball games” on Stacey’s headstone. The family approved.
But then all the Connecticut players approach each possession as if their family names are at stake. There are no casual cuts, screens, boxouts or closeouts with Connecticut, which might explain why the closest game in the Huskies’ 10-game NCAA tournament winning streak was a 13-pointer over Miami last year.
So who can survive King Kong? The basketball world turns its eyes to a possible UConn-Purdue matchup, in which Clingan will actually have to look up to Zach Edey, the 7-foot-4 present and future national Player of the Year. That can’t happen until the NCAA finals, and Purdue has a sticky wicket coming up Sunday in its own Final 8 game, against the iron defense of Tennessee.
Alabama is next for Connecticut, in Saturday’s semifinal. Pro tip for the Tide: The behemoth at the rim, although human, should be approached with extreme caution.