Adama Sanogo, UConn men show grit, and get finishing kick to knock off Alabama, 82-67; will face Iowa State for Phil Knight Invitational title
For the UConn men’s basketball team, the first six games were works of art, passing, shooting clinics that overmatched the competition.
That doesn’t work every night, as competition gets stiffer. The Huskies were due for a rock fight, a game they would have to win with grit. They got one, and got it done in the Phil Knight Invitational semifinals Friday and wrested the game away from Alabama, 82-67, in a match of top-20 teams at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
UConn, ranked 20th, will play Iowa State, which earlier in the day upset top-ranked North Carolina, for the championship Sunday night at 10 p.m. The UConn women will play Iowa for the championship of their Phil Knight Legacy bracket at 1 p.m., both games in the Moda Center.
“The whole mindset of our program this year,” said coach Dan Hurley, in the midst of his longest winning streak as a college coach, “we’ve been contending the last couple of years, contending in the Big East, contending in tournaments. Now we’re trying to go from contenders to champions and we have a chance to do that on Sunday.”
The Huskies (7-0) jumped out to a 15-point lead late in the first half against No. 18 Alabama, but the Crimson Tide slowly grinded that lead down to zero, tying the game several times in the second half as UConn’s top players got into foul trouble.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game going in, two great teams, we knew it was going to be a dogfight,” said Jordan Hawkins, who scored 16 despite foul trouble of his own. “But we know we’ve got more heart than a lot of teams in the country and I think we showed it today.”
With the game tied at 52 with 8:52 to play, the Huskies got their offense in gear, Adama Sanogo scoring on a layup to put them ahead and ignite a 23-2 run to blow the game open. Sanogo, who finished with 25 points, took over the game down the stretch, scoring inside and hitting a big 3-pointer. Sanogo, who has added the three to his game this season, missed his first three badly, but with UConn up seven and gathering momentum, he delivered what Hurley called “a kill shot” to make it 63-53.
“The thing about him is the self-confidence and he belief,” Hurley said. “He bricked his first three threes there, but then, a lot of players who have never made threes would have not taken the fourth one. That’s a separator, man, the mental confidence.”
At one point, Sanogo, at the 3-point line, reversed the usual process and threw inside to Hawkins for a layup.
“It opens it up tremendously,” Hawkins said. “When he starts hitting threes, makes those passes over the top like he did today, I think we’re kind of unstoppable. He just keep expanding his game, which makes us better.”
Alex Karaban scored 12 and Joey Calcaterra 10 for the Huskies. Tristen Newton scored nine, all over the final 10 minutes, going 6-for-6 from the line.
Alabama (5-1) struggled from the floor much of the game against a tenacious Huskies defense, their top scorer, freshman Brandon Miller, held to 5-for-15. The Crimson Tide turned the ball over 16 times in the first half, while getting off only 23 shots.
“They had a better scheme, and they did a better job executing it,” said Alabama coach Nate Oats, a long-time, close friend of the Hurley brothers. “Hopefully we’re both in the NCAA Tournament and we make a run and play see ‘em again. I don’t necessarily want to play them again, but if we do hopefully it’s deep in the tournament.”
The game started out with rugged, physical defense on both sides. UConn turned Alabama over nine times in the first nine minutes, but the Huskies were not efficient on offense and the game was tied, 10-10, after 8 1/2 minutes.
Newton, who scored 21 in the first half against Oregon on Friday, was held scoreless in the first half by Alabama, but UConn got scoring elsewhere. Calcaterra came off the bench to score five quick points as UConn jumped ahead. That sparked a 14-0 run to give the Huskies a commanding lead.
The Huskies moved ahead 33-18 on Hawkins’ three, one of three he made in the half, but then Alabama, the top rebounding team in the country, began to claw back in it. A couple of offensive fouls called on Sanogo helped change the momentum, and the Crimson Tide finished the half with a 12-2 run. The teams exchanged some words at midcourt as the half ended, UConn taking a 35-30 lead to the locker room.
Alabama continued to control play in the second half, as fouls began to mount for UConn, and tied the game at 44 on two free throws from Noah Clowney with 13:11 to play, but never did take the lead.
Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com
