Huskies Take Care of Business
Leave it to mangle-a-minute talker Jim Calhoun to brilliantly sum up Connecticut’s 71-59 victory over Southern Illiniois and do a hack-job on the English language.
All in the same breath.
“We don’t have better players,” the Connecticut coach said. “We just have more better players. I know that’s grammatically incorrect.”
Calhoun gets paid to coach basketball, and he’s more better than most.
Connecticut’s win Friday night at the Carrier Dome in the East Regional semifinals vaulted the Huskies into Sunday’s final against Maryland.
No. 2 Connecticut (27-6) didn’t do anything fancy to oust No. 11 Southern Illinois (28-8). The Huskies simply took care of business on a night when it would have been easy to look ahead.
It was an important game but, strangely, not a very interesting one.
Connecticut went on a 12-4 run at the end of the first half and took a 12-point lead into intermission.
Southern Illinois, which defeated Texas Tech and Georgia to get here, was too good to go away quietly but not quite good enough to ever mount a serious threat.
The Salukis cut the lead to six points three times in the second half, yet the Huskies countered every punch.
Did the Huskies have problems?
You bet.
Connecticut had no answer in the first half for Southern Illinois’ 6-foot-6 center Rolan Roberts. Saluki Coach Bruce Weber made an interesting strategic decision to attack Emeka Okafor, Connecticut’s talented freshman center.
“They ran the first seven plays right at him,” Calhoun said of the strategy. “That’s great coaching, because they challenged him.”
Roberts scored his team’s first eight points, all on inside baskets, and had 16 of his game-high 24 points in the first half.
But Weber’s attack tactic couldn’t beat Connecticut alone. Roberts and forward Jermaine Dearman, who finished with 17 points, accounted for 41 of the team’s 59 points.
The Salukis didn’t have enough weapons. Their perimeter shooters made only one of 14 three-point attempts under heavy pressure from Connecticut guards Taliek Brown and Tony Robertson.
The Huskies did a terrific job frustrating Saluki guard Kent Williams, the team’s leading scorer at 16 points per game. Williams made only two of 11 shots and finished with seven points.
“I had to fight for every open shot I got,” Williams said.
Even Roberts couldn’t stay hot forever. Connecticut slowed him down in the second half with double teams.
“We got someone down to ‘rake the post’”, was how Calhoun put it.
Still, the pesky Salukis tried desperately to keep up.
Dearman’s free throw with 3:16 left cut the lead to six at 62-56, but Caron Butler’s basket and three free throws in the next minute pushed the lead back to 11.
“They kept enough distance on us,” Weber lamented. “We couldn’t get over the hump.”
Said Butler, who led Connecticut with 19 points: “We had to really out-will them....
“I want to put this team on my back and lead it to the Final Four and the national championship.”
