University of Connecticut Athletics
Gordon and Okafor Lead Huskies Over Ball State
12/28/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
HARTFORD, CT (December 28, 2003) – Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor each scored 25 points and the Huskies had a blistering streak from the field as top-ranked Connecticut enjoyed an easy 101-62 victory over Ball State, Sunday afternoon, before the usual sellout crowd of 16,294 at the Hartford Civic Center.
The win, UConn’s sixth in a row, improves the Husky record to 9-1. The Cardinals slip to 3-5.
Okafor and Gordon both had outstanding games as the Huskies broke open an 11-10 game with a half-ending 30-13 run to give UConn a 41-23 lead at intermission. Denham Brown scored 11 points and Gordon had 10 in the decisive run. In a 15- minute span that bridged both halves, the Huskies connected on an amazing 18 of 23 shots from the field as the UConn lead increased from 30-17 to 76-45.
Okafor’s scoring total matched his career-high and along with his 14 rebounds, notched the 34th double-double of his career. He made 10 of 15 shots from the field and added five blocks. Gordon made nine of 15 from the field, had five assists and had a crowd-pleasing windmill dunk with 11:47 to play in the game. Denham Brown finished with 20 points on eight of 11 shooting. The Huskies shot 58% (41 of 71) from the field as a team, a sizzling 74% (25 of 34) after intermission.
Taliek Brown had his third straight solid effort running the point, dishing out eight assists against just one turnover. In his last three contests, Brown has 23 assists and just three turnovers. Freshman power forward Josh Boone had seven points and seven rebounds.
The Huskies won the battle of the boards, 49-33, and was able to accumulate 30 fast break points to just eight for Ball State. UConn also had a 56-30 advantage in points in the paint.
Cameron Echols led Ball State with 22 points.
The Huskies return to action on Tuesday, December 30, when they entertain Massachusetts at the Hartford Civic Center. Tip-off is slated for 7:00 p.m. and the game will not be televised locally.
POST GAME QUOTES
UConn Head Coach Jim Calhoun
Given the fact that we started off a little bit slow, and it was a team that, stylistically and coaching-wise, gave us some resistance…. As the game opened up I was upset with our kids for not jumping them and thought that we may have to grind it out. Over the vacation, we put a lot of work into something we haven’t done too much of, and that’s a 1-2-1-1 press. Normally our press is a three-quarter press – we went to a full, on-the-ball press. It gave a couple of layups up, but what it really did was accelerate the pace of the game. Once the game’s pace changed, they ended up getting 72 shots up, which is 18 more than they normally shoot, then the game was in exactly the tempo that we wanted it to be, and things started to develop.
I thought early, in the first 6, 7, 8 minutes of the game, they ran a very good offense. I think Timmy does a terrific job coaching them. They had no one, physically, who was going to play Emeka. And when Denham and Ben play like that, which is the way we expect them to play, we’re awfully hard to beat. And then we have people coming off the bench that can do some things also.
I was relatively pleased with our offense. We had no points, it seemed, after 10 minutes, and then we still ended up with over 100 points in the game, and shoot 70-something percent in the second half. Because of the tempo of the game, there wasn’t anything that Timmy could do about it, we just got our game going.
I don’t know if we played great early, yet for 20 minutes we played suffocating defense to turn a game that was a grinder into a blowout. Ball State didn’t have much control over that, we just had better people that were able to execute that.
I’m not really into the point thing, I’m into how we’re playing. At 14-10 against Iona, I knew Iona was in big trouble. I could tell. Today, we were up 7 at 19-12 and I didn’t think that Ball State was in trouble. I thought they were running their offense – Owens, normally a very good shooter, misses some open threes – I didn’t like seeing the open threes. We eventually got it going.
Maybe I won’t like what happens this week, with three games, but it’s much more my druthers to try to play three games in six days than it would be to play every eight days, every seven days, every seven days. We’ve played 3 games in 22 games, and that’s hard.
Ben Gordon
On the team’s slow start
I think guys were a little bit winded from the long break. We were just trying to get back into the flow of things. But defensively we played alright in the first half.
On the team responding to Calhoun’s first timeout
Coach got into everybody’s face and told us to pick it up offensively and defensively. And that’s something we did a better job of coming out after that timeout.
Is the windmill dunk something new in your repertoire?
No, that’s something I had for a long time. I just never did it. Today I just thought I’d do something a little fancy.
On the fast start in the 2nd half (2 hoops in the first 12 seconds)
I thought that was a great way for us to come out and kill every fire or determination they had, and it sparked us as a team.
Do you feel like the team is coming together?
Yes, we definitely are, especially defensively. We always knew we had a lot of offensive weapons. But the thing we worry about most is defense. And we’ve shown signs, over the last couple of games, that we can be a real good defensive team.
Coach really got on us about how many easy baskets we missed in the first half. I think we had something like 7 missed lay-ups. So we wanted to come out in the second half and concentrate on the easier baskets we had.
Is defense starting to become the team’s identity?
I wouldn’t say quite yet. We still have a long way to go and we think we can get even better defensively. We definitely want that to be our identity. We don’t just want to be a team with a lot of good offensive players and can’t lock people up.
On Denham Brown’s play
Denham’s been real consistent. He’s a tough defender and offensively he’s been tough to stop. And we need that from him throughout the year.
Emeka Okafor
On UMass
You have to take every game seriously. You can’t sleep. Freshman year we slept on St. Bonaventure and we lost by 20. Ben, Taliek, and Shamon and all those guys, we were there when it happened we told the other guys that hey, come out and play every time.
On the preseason hype of being #1…is it easier to be #1 now?
I don’t think it will be any easier but I think we feel more comfortable with it right now. I think we are starting to truly believe what we can do. We understand that it is going to be a difficult road…Oklahoma, Georgetown, UNC, Pittsburgh and add in Rutgers and it is not going to be easy at all, but it is going to be a whole lot of fun. Being in that (#1) position, that is what we look for.
On the 3rd offensive option of Denham Brown
Just having Denham be able to score like that takes a lot of pressure off of Ben and me.
On playing against the double team
When there is a 3rd option like Denham, it just opens up so many possibilities.
Denham Brown
Our defense early in the second half really ignited us. Emeka got a dunk. Ben got a steal, got an ‘and one’. That really ignited us emotionally so that gave us the edge to make our plays.
On the team responding to Calhoun’s early 1st half timeout
Coach does what he does and that triggered something in us to just go out there and do what we had to do to get the lead up. I went up to Ben with about 5 minutes left to go (in the 1st half), ‘we have to get this up to at least 15 by halftime.’ So we’re out there trying to get things done as much as Coach is.
Where is the team defensively?
I think we’re pretty good defensively. We’re still holding teams to about 35% (shooting). We can get better obviously. We’re still working on some thing on defense. But I think the effort of all 5 guys on the defensive end has been picking up. Everybody is aware of things they can do, and we’re not leaving the burden on Emeka to make blocks.
Taliek Brown
It is just my health. My explosiveness and my quickness are coming back to me. I am just out there having fun, that is what it is really.
On limping at end of game
It is alright, I just twisted it a little when I came down wrong, but it is OK.
On quick start in the 2nd half
We just came out really explosive, really ready to go in the second half…we got a quick steal, Ben scored, and everyone was really into it.
On playing more than 1x a week now
This is where the tough part comes…we just have to be ready and get healthy and keep working.
On UMass last year
That was the one where we were down by so much…then we picked it up in the second half and started playing defensive and being explosive.
On guarding against that this year
We just have to come out like we do every single game. We know that they are going to come out and be ready to play against us, especially after what happened last year, they are going to come out
We just have to grind it out, grind it out, until we just get on one of those runs like we did today.
Ball State Head Coach Tim Buckley
First of all, my congratulations to Connecticut. I don’t know why they call them the UConn Huskies, they should call them the Charlotte Bobcats, because that is a professional outfit there. What gets lost in the shuffle, I think, because of all of the talent they have is that they are as well a coached team as we’ve ever prepared for. I think their staff and Coach Calhoun do a terrific job of coaching that basketball team.
In the second half we really got away from the game plan, which has been our downfall all year. Until our basketball team buys in and listens to what we are trying to do for 40 minutes, we are going to struggle.
What we did a good job of early in transition, was we got back and got our defense set, and we talked about, if someone leaves to go, you have to go with them, and if we have to play 4 v 4, we’ll play 4 v 4.
As the game wore on , we started running along side guys, thinking we were back, and what they do is throw it ahead, they sweep it and drive baseline and because everybody is jogging with their man there is no help and you can’t rotate over to stop it.
On UConn
The one thing they do a great job of, and this where they are well-coached, is they are relentless with how they attack you and they never give up with where they want to get the basketball. They’ll try to beat you high-low, they’ll try to beat you on that cross-screen. I think they have all the right pieces, and then they keep giving you the size…then they keep bringing the size and athleticism. It is an impressive outfit.
On Taliek Brown
I don’t care what anyone says, Taliek Brown is as good a point guard as there is. I’ve heard some negative things and I don’t agree with that. I think he is an excellent point guard for this basketball team and he gives them exactly what they need. I know one thing: If I’m playing, I’m giving the ball to Denham Brown and I’m giving it to Ben Gordon and I’m going to rack up a lot of assists and I think that is what he does, and I think he is a dog on defense. He will just guard you relentlessly, and I think he takes a lot of good perimeter people on the defensive side of the ball.
