Huskies Collared by the Bulldogs

The fabulous fastbreak? Never happened. The frightening full-court pressure? Shredded. The last, desperate shot by the All-American guard? Wasn’t even close.

Everything that was grand and great about the top-seeded Connecticut Huskies’ near-perfect season was taken away Friday night by an unlikely Mississippi State team with a chip on its shoulder and, suddenly, a hot run of victories in its pocket.

After 4 1/2 months of overwhelmingly successful rapid-fire basketball, the flash-dancing Huskies got stuck in an awkward waltz, and could never escape.

Behind guard Darryl Wilson’s early blistering shooting (he finished with a game-high 27 points) and a defense that wouldn’t let UConn break loose, the Bulldogs moved on to the Southeast Region final against Cincinnati with a 60-55 semifinal victory before 23,890 at Rupp Arena.

“We just couldn’t get ourselves to accelerate the pace out there,” UConn Coach Jim Calhoun said. “In the early going, they were actually beating us down the floor.

“I’d like to play them in a series, but that’s not what we do here in the NCAAs. So we’re going home.”

Calhoun stressed that he was proud of his team’s accomplishments this season, but said he was disappointed that the team went out so mildly, and without seeming to even try to push the ball up the court. The Huskies did not score off their transition game.

“We didn’t go out the way we got in: running,” Calhoun said. “I was screaming at my players during the game, ‘Push it, push it, push it!’ Even if we didn’t get a basket, the pace would’ve changed.”

The Huskies (32-3) were held almost 30 points below their season average of 83.5, and their superb guard duo of Ray Allen and Doron Sheffer combined to make only 12 of their 29 field-goal attempts, including Allen’s attempt to tie the game from three-point distance with about 12 seconds left in the game.

Allen led UConn with 22 points, but was only three for 14 in the second half.

“I think a lot of times, the notion of passing the ball was not in my mind,” said Allen, who had only one assist. “The whole team did not pass the ball as well as we’ve done in the past.”

UConn came out shooting cold, and got snowed under by five quick three-point shots from the top of the key by Wilson, who had 17 points after only 11 minutes of action.

With Wilson loosening the Husky defense--and no player other than Allen putting anything in the basket--Mississippi State lead by as much as 16 points three times in the half, the last at 37-21 with 3:23 left after a thunderous dunk by center Erick Dampier.

At halftime, UConn trailed, 37-25, and had made only 29% (10 of 34) of its shots. Though the Huskies rallied over the last part of the second half to close within three, 58-55, with 28 seconds left, UConn shot only 32.4% on the night.

Meanwhile, the Bulldog guards, who after the game spoke about how overlooked they felt before this game, calmly handled UConn’s pressure defense.

“A lot was written and said about the guard matchup, and I think my guards did a pretty good job tonight,” Bulldog Coach Richard Williams said. “Darryl came out and just hit shot after shot, and when Darryl’s shooting the ball like that, our players know that we want him to get him the ball as much as we can.”

Said Wilson, who knocked UConn off-balance in the first half by making his first five three-point attempts: “I hit my first couple shots, and I think Coach could see that I felt pretty good tonight. After that, seemed like every set we ran, I was coming wide open.”

After a slow regular-season start, in the last week and a half, fifth-seeded Mississippi State (25-7) has registered victories over Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference tournament final, over Virginia Commonwealth and Princeton in the first two rounds of the Southeast Regional, and now, third-ranked Connecticut, the Big East champion.

“How good are we? I don’t know,” Williams said. “There are times when we play with the level of emotion and effort we did tonight, we’re pretty good. Some nights early in the season, we weren’t that good.”

This is Mississippi State’s first trip to the tournament’s final eight.

“Who would’ve ever thought,” Wilson said with a huge smile, “that Mississippi State would be in the Elite Eight?”