GLENDALE, Ariz. — If there’s one play from UConn‘s win over Alabama on Saturday night that typified the Huskies’ run toward back-to-back national championships, it wasn’t a Donovan Clingan blocked shot or an Alex Karaban transition 3-pointer.
It was Tristen Newton, calmly standing off to the side chewing his gum, then slowly working his way back to the ball to receive a pass and bury a 3-pointer to give UConn a nine-point lead midway through the second half.
Aside from having the nation’s best offense and a top-five defense, one thing that has separated the Huskies is their unflappability. They have supreme confidence in what they’re doing. Eventually their shots will start falling. Eventually the opponent’s shooting will regress to the mean. Eventually the better team will win — and this season, the better team, far more often than not, has been UConn.
And that was the case again on Saturday night, as the overall 1-seed Huskies advanced to their second straight national championship game with an 86-72 win over 4-seed Alabama.
UConn will face fellow 1-seed Purdue, which beat NC State in the first Final Four matchup, in Monday’s national title game.
While UConn’s 30-0 run last week against Illinois was a lightning-in-a-bottle scenario, it did highlight a major theme for UConn this season: The Huskies just don’t stop attacking. And most teams run out of steam before UConn.
The first 10 minutes of Saturday’s second half were the epitome of a blow-for-blow sequence. The first team that failed to counter was likely going to lose.
The Huskies started the period with four straight points to open up their biggest lead of the game, an eight-point edge. Alabama immediately responded with a 7-0 run, then UConn countered with a 7-0 run of its own — and Alabama came right back with a 7-0 run and ultimately tied the game at 56 with 12:41 remaining.
UConn scored the next eight points and Alabama didn’t get closer than six points the rest of the way.
The Crimson Tide were able to withstand most of UConn’s runs because they couldn’t miss from 3, hitting nine of their first 12 attempts from behind the arc. But they made just one of their next nine 3s as UConn continued to score timely baskets or get clutch stops when needed.
Alabama posed a bigger challenge for UConn than any team the Huskies have faced in this year’s NCAA tournament. The Crimson Tide were making shots early and forcing UConn’s defense to rotate out of position, especially when star center Donovan Clingan was out of the game. Clingan blocked a shot on Alabama’s first possession and controlled the paint at that end of the floor.
But when he went to the bench, Alabama was able to take advantage, scoring a quick 10 points on its first four possessions with Clingan out of the game. After UConn trailed for just 28 seconds in its first four games of this year’s NCAA tournament, Alabama led the Huskies for almost five minutes in the first half of Saturday’s game. They also faced their largest deficit of the tournament when the Tide opened up a 23-18 lead with 11:09 remaining in the first half.
“We certainly aren’t going to just drive the ball at (Clingan) and expect to score over the top of him all night,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said earlier this week. “That didn’t seem to work very well their last game out.”
All week, Alabama wasn’t shy about its identity and what got them to the Final Four: 3-point shooting. The Crimson Tide made 16 shots from behind the arc in the regional final against Clemson and had made at least 11 3s in three of their four NCAA tournament games.
In the first half against UConn, the recipe didn’t change. Three of Alabama’s first four field goals were 3-pointers, including a Grant Nelson triple on the Tide’s first possession. They shot 8-for-11 from the perimeter in the first half.
“It all depends on how the defense wants to guard us … I don’t really care if we shoot 50 in a game if that’s how they want to guard us,” Oats said on Friday. “We’ve hit 20-plus, I think, five different times. Can’t make 20 if you’re not taking 40, 50 of ’em. Let ’em fly.”
For UConn, it was Clingan and fellow projected first-rounder Stephon Castle willing the Huskies into the lead. Castle, the five-star freshman, was assigned to defend Alabama star guard Mark Sears — and held him scoreless for the first 6:38, while scoring 13 points of his own. The Crimson Tide were giving Castle — a 26.2% 3-point shooter on the season — plenty of space on the offensive end, with Nelson cheating off him to help clog the lane around Clingan. Castle responded by burying two early 3s and showing plenty of aggressiveness driving to the rim.
“There’s a reason why, in the basketball world, people are as high on Steph as they are. He’s a winning player, and obviously he’s got an incredible career in the NBA ahead of him,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said after the Huskies’ win over Illinois in the Elite Eight. “He’s been the anti-five star freshman. He does whatever the team needs for us to win.”
Clingan and Castle bought UConn enough time for veteran guards Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer — the Huskies’ two stalwarts all season — to get their offense going. Newton scored five straight late in the first half and then Spencer hit a couple of shots to help the Huskies open up a 42-35 lead with 1:15 left until halftime.
With a potential game-changing run looming — and the 30-0 avalanche against Illinois just one week ago — it was Sears who kept Alabama within arm’s reach going into the break. He hit a corner 3 with 50 seconds left and then a leaner in the lane as time expired to cut UConn’s lead to 44-40 at the end of the first half.
