University of Connecticut Athletics
Huskies Battle Back in Second Half to Overcome UMass
12/10/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Post game quotes follow story
HARTFORD, CT (December 10, 2002) -- Freshmen guards Rashad Anderson (Lakeland, FL) and Denham Brown (Toronto, ONT) and sophomore guard Ben Gordon (Mt. Vernon, NY) led a furious second half rally as ninth-ranked Connecticut overcame a horrible start, Tuesday, to defeat Massachusetts 59-48 before a crowd of 14,962 at the Hartford Civic Center.
The victory was the sixth straight to start the season for UConn, while the Minutemen slipped to 1-5.
Connecticut trailed, 34-9, with 18:37 to play before the Huskies exploded with eight three-pointers to key a 29-2 run over 12:05 that included a frenetic 22-0 run. In the decisive rally, Anderson hit three three-pointers, Gordon hit two from beyond the arc and two free throws and Brown hit two long-range jumpers. Connecticut was able to wrestle control of the game from the Minutemen when they applied full-court pressure and forced four key turnovers in the big spurt.
UMass battled to tie at 38-38, but Mike Hayes (Hartford, CT) hit back-to-back jumpers and UConn never trailed again, as the Huskies made their final nine free throws to give them a deceptive 11-point win.
The first half was all Massachusetts, as the Huskies scored the fewest points in a half under Jim Calhoun, trailing 30-9 at intermission. The Huskies shot just 15% (4 of 26) in the first half and couldn’t contain UMass’ Jackie Rogers who had 10 points.
Gordon led UConn with 18 points. Anderson scored a career-high 16 of the bench and Brown had 11. Center Emeka Okafor (Houston, TX), the nation’s leading rebounder, snared 13, his sixth consecutive double-digit rebounding effort of the season.
Anthony Anderson led UMass with 13 points.
The Huskies will now take a 10-day break for semester exams and will resume their schedule when they host UNC Asheville on Saturday, December 21, at the Hartford Civic Center. Tip-off is slated for 12:00 p.m. and the game will be televised by WTXX- TV 20.
QUOTES
UConn Coach Jim Calhoun Quotes v. UMass
It was a tale of two games, obviously. I think in the first half we were comatose. For whatever reason, Taliek was being played triangle and two and couldn’t run the offense for us, couldn’t get any break going, and then they’d wind the clock down to under 10 on us every single time. Instead of becoming inspired by it, we were deflated by it. And it affected us…We became discouraged by the fact that we couldn’t run and we were having to play defense for so long.
By the halftime, it was pretty apparent to me that the press was about that far away from working if we could get the trap at half court someplace. All we had to do was get the second line (of the press) to show a little more and get more active. That’s one of the reasons we used Denham – he’s a more mobile guy, a 4 man even tonight, to try and get more activity with the press.
There’s no question the press turned the game around along with Rashad Anderson first, Denham second, Ben, and Emeka’s shot-blocking. I just think it was a terrific, terrific win for us… I hope the best thing we did is we learned, hopefully, who we are tonight and that we can win a game under almost any circumstances. And if you believe that, you can will yourself.
If we played with the energy in the press in the first half that we did in the second half, we wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place.
I give Steve incredible amounts of credit. They come in here with one win over Chaminade, facing supposedly the 9th ranked team in the country...I think Steve just did a terrific job.
George turned to me and said, “Do you think we’re going to get a basket this half?” And I told him I didn’t know, and that’s the scary part. But I felt if we could get the press going that’s the only way we were going to speed the game up. I just didn’t think we could play half court, in this particular game, down 24 or 25 points.
Rashad Anderson
On His Three Pointers
Coach had a lot of confidence in me and once I got in the game, I found my rhythm.
On the Team Playing Poorly in the First Half
Never felt this badly as a team, we felt closer together and put it together we can do anything when we play together and that’s what we did tonight.
Coach’s Halftime Speech/About the Crowd Booing
He told us “this is a pride game, show what you can do, play UConn basketball” and that’s what we did in the second half.
Coach on Shooting
He gave me the green light since the first day of practice. He told me if I ever catch the ball in the rhythm to shoot it, because he knows it’s going to go in, he’s got confidence in me.
On second half
It was a team effort, everybody stepped up on the defensive end. Emeka made a couple of blocks and had a few rebounds. The offense started up too in the second half. Any player, any freshman wants to come of the bench and start up a run.
Taliek Brown
On the First Half
I’ve got to credit them, they played a good game, played hard defense on us. We’d been getting ready for the triangle all week, they switched it up from what we were expecting and it confused us. But we responded to it in the second half.
On the Crowd Booing
They paid their money to come watch us win, but when it comes down to it, we didn’t play to satisfy them, we had to satisfy ourselves and our coaching staff.
On the Second Half
Everybody came out more explosive. Denham started shooting the ball well, Rashad started shooting well. We just started getting open looks from our offense.
The adrenaline, the pride of our team, we’ve never been in a position like that before, we knew we couldn’t go out like that, with our fans booing.
On Excitement of Fans
We heard them going crazy, it just got everybody going more.
Denham Brown
Poor First Half
This was a great ball game, we struggled severely in the first half and couldn’t hit any of our shots. Playing against the triangle made it hard to run our offense. But in the second half we started getting hungry and doesn’t matter if you want to run offense, you just put the ball in the basket.
On the Three-Pointers
We go at it in practice, you just feed off the confidence of one another. If you see one guy hit it, then you go for it and hit it and it just causes a chain reaction.
Rashaad coming off the bench started the fire, and he’s not really known for being a defensive player but he got hungry and got us started.
Emeka Okafor
Does this show character in this team?
It shows that we are not going to give up. We were down 34-9 at one point and we just could have stopped, cried and went home. But we stuck with it. We played our game. We got refocused. And most of all we stuck together. We had that no quit attitude and just put up the win.
What happened in the first half?
We were in the ‘Twilight Zone’. I don’t know what we were doing, but we weren’t playing Connecticut basketball.
On the fans booing
The way we were playing, we deserved it. The fans kind of helped us get refocused…So we got out in the second half and played our hearts out. And the fans rewarded us by cheering for us, helping us on, and that helped us get this win also.
Ben Gordon
In the first half, we ran absolutely no offense. I mean zero offense. Everything was a one pass and shot…A lot of times we kicked it to a guy on the wing, he was wide open, and so it was hard to resist taking that shot. And we were not knocking down the outside shot and I think that’s what hurt us in the first half.
If we didn’t pull this off, we would have been practicing tonight. And all 11 days until the next game.
Tonight we had a lot of guys who stepped up, particularly Denham and Rashad. And don’t forget Mike who hit those two elbow jump shots.
When you were coming back, did you feel invincible?
Everybody’s just yelling, encouraging each other, screaming encouraging words. And it really helps. I just wish we could psych ourselves up to be like that at the beginning of the game so we wouldn’t have to go through these problems.
On getting booed
It might be ridiculous to the new players, but I faced it last year against St. Bonnies. You just don’t expect, going into the game, to hear things like that. But we came together as a team. And that’s all we really have out there is a coaching staff and a team when all is said and done. And in the second half we just stuck together and fought it out.
When did you get a sense that you could pull it off?
Once we got our press defense going, and we saw that they couldn’t handle it, we just started feeding off of it. It was just like a snowball effect – everything just rolled over and we just got more baskets and more stops on defense.
Surprised at the confidence of Rashad Anderson?
No, not at all. From the beginning of the year – preseason – you could just see how confident he was. He wasn’t scared to play against any of the older guys. It was like he was there for a couple of years already.
He played great defense, which Rashad is not usually know for. He’s known for his outside shooting. But he played great defense and hit some big shots.
UMass Head Coach Steve Lappas
I thought our guys did a tremendous job with the things we could control. If you told me before the game that Emeka Okafor was going to have 4 points, and Ben Gordon was going to have the kind of 18 that he had -- he's a great player, don't get me wrong, but it was 18 and a lot of it was at the end -- and that we were going to outrebound them by 10 rebounds, I would have said "I don't even care what the score is, that's got to be great for us."
We did a great job tonight, we played as hard as we could. There's no such thing as moral victories, but as I told the guys on the team, the way I look at it, these 6 games that we've played were our learning period, our exhibition season and, now, the season really starts for us on Saturday.
We've learned something about ourselves, we've learned something about our team. You know, we had some young guys out there, too, tonight. We had three freshmen play significant minutes....And they looked like freshmen at times, there's no doubt about it. But I think it bodes well for our guys as long as we go out there and play with that kind of intensity and conviction. We knew what we wanted to do and we went out there and really did our best to do it.
I feel like we ran out of gas and I feel like we didn't give them the game. Yeah, they made a couple of steals, they made some threes. The kid Rashad Anderson was averaging less than 2 points per game coming into this, Mike Hayes hasn't made a jump shot from the foul line EVER and he makes 2 in-a-row. So what are you going to say? I mean, they're a great team. They're a great team, we gave it our best shot, we're on the road, and that's what happened.
On halftime score
You couldn't have told me that before the game in a million years that was going to happen. It was just one of those halves for them, but like great teams....I know one thing, if we can hold them to nine, they can hold us to nine in a half, too. We got a little more than 9 in the second half, but not a whole lot more. And that's what I knew at halftime. I said "Geez, guys, if we could do this to them I'm sure they can do it to us."
Marcus Cox
It's very frustrating. To be up 30-9 and have them come back is disappointing, but it's a learning experience for us.
You know I've been in situations like this before with the team (Connecticut) when we were down by a lot of points and came back in the second half to win games. I told the team at halftime "We've got the second half. They're coming, and we've got to be ready." I don't think we cracked up too much, but I think at certain times we were tentative when we should have been aggressive.
Micah Brand
In second half
I think a big part of it was that they started hitting a lot of shots that they didn't hit in the first half, and then the press in the second half kind of killed us. We were playing a little bit tentatively and not really attacking as much as we should have. That led to a couple of turnovers.
