UConn men’s basketball sweeps Big East weekly awards, enters top 25 ahead of Tuesday matchup with Buffalo
The UConn men’s basketball team opened its season with convincing wins over first-year Division I program Stonehill and Boston University which helped the Huskies enter the first regular season AP Poll at No. 25, which was released Monday.
It was also announced Monday that UConn junior Adama Sanogo received Big East player of the week honors, while Alex Karaban earned the freshman of the week nod.
Sanogo, the Big East preseason player of the year, averaged 23 points, 10.5 rebounds and shot 77% overall and 67% from three over the Huskies’ first two games. Against Boston University, Sanogo scored 27 points, three shy of a career-high, and grabbed 15 rebounds. He also made two of three 3-point attempts in the game.
Karaban, a redshirt freshman who joined the Huskies for the spring semester last season but was unable to play, averaged 13.5 points, 4 rebounds and 3.5 assists – the only Big East freshman to average double-digit points in the season’s opening week. A forward, Karaban earned his first start in the Huskies’ second game against Boston University after Samson Johnson suffered a foot injury.
With three key players injured (Andre Jackson Jr., Jordan Hawkins and Johnson), Sanogo and Karaban , along with UConn’s four transfers and freshman Donovan Clingan, knew they needed to step up.
“Those three players are gonna be super important for us going into the future,” Karaban said after the win over Boston U. “And we’ve got to step up faster. Especially for me and Donovan, we can’t play like freshmen when those three players are out. So we got to continue to step up, continue to play how we’re playing. And then our transfers, they have to be adjusted more quickly to how Coach Hurley wants to play. And they’ve been doing a great job of that so far. And once we’ve stepped up and they come back into the mix, we’ll be a scary team.”
Big East foe Villanova, which lost its second game against Temple, dropped out of the AP Poll. The Wildcats are third in the “others receiving votes” category with 96 voting points, behind Michigan State (119) and Purdue (104). Creighton (2-0) dropped one spot, down to No. 10, as the only other ranked Big East team.
UConn hosts Buffalo at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Hartford’s XL Center.
