NEW YORK (AP) — By the time Dan Hurley got called for a technical foul a little over seven minutes in, UConn had already given the ball away three times and committed another turnover by failing to get it inbounds.
The situation only devolved from there, on the way to getting beat 72-52 by fellow Big East powerhouse St. John’s in the conference tournament title game. The sixth-ranked Huskies go into the NCAA Tournament having lost two of their past
four games and displayed cracks throughout the season that threaten to prevent another long March Madness run for a program that expects it.
"This team has definitely showed a level of fragility that some of our best teams haven’t," Hurley said, unsure if he felt it was a soft performance or just a bad one. “We’ve been a team that has been very charitable to a lot of teams we play with live ball turnovers that lead to runouts. So, if we can’t take care of the ball and we can’t make shots, then obviously we’ve got problems. But I think they’re fixable things.”
One potential problem is an apparent left ankle injury to starting point guard Silas Demary Jr., who was carried off the floor after going down when he stopped on one of Zuby Ejiofor's feet in the final minutes. Demary was initially injured midway through the second half and returned, but before the clock ran out, his parents were called down from the stands to check on him and he did not come back again.
Hurley said the first thing he had heard was Demary had a “very mild sprain with no swelling” and expects a precautionary X-ray to be taken.
“We’ll keep our fingers crossed,” Hurley said. “Hopefully it’s not something that lingers.”
UConn will play Thursday or Friday in the opening round of the tournament. Had Hurley's team not lost at Marquette on March 7 in the regular season finale in what he called a “choke job” and then been on the receiving end of a 20-point drubbing against St. John's, a No. 1 seed certainly seemed possible.
Very unlikely now, even after No. 4 Florida got knocked out of the Southeastern Conference Tournament in the semifinals. Hurley, who coached UConn to back-to-back national championships in 2023 and '24, is not worried about this early March swoon.
“We flush it, and we’re going to be a 2 seed,” Hurley said. “We’ve had a season this year at UConn that’s earned us a 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, so we’re going to get excited about that.”
There were moments to get excited about in the Big East Tournament final, including a 13-2 run in the second half that cut the deficit to seven. But the Huskies never got closer, shooting 3 of 19 from 3-point range and hurting themselves with 17 turnovers.
They had 16 against Marquette.
“We had a lot of turnovers,” said forward Alex Karaban, one of four players with three apiece. “(If) we show up defensively, we show up taking care of the ball, then we’re one of the best teams in the country. We just got to do it on a nightly basis.”
Freshman Braylon Mullins, who scored a 21 points in a semifinal victory against Georgetown on Friday night, struggled early with giveaways and missed shots in the final versus St. John's. He acknowledged he and his teammates won't forget what happened but doesn't want to dwell on it with the NCAA Tournament ahead.
“You can’t really think about all these losses,” Mullins said. “It just will drag the team down. Just remaining as confident as possible and just fixing what we can coming up in the next week.”
Hurley's biggest takeaway was that he wants his players to “stay off social media.”
“The fickle nature of fans and people with opinions, the reality of this team is this has been a great season for these guys,” Hurley said. “We don’t have anything to show for it relative to a championship, but it’s a 29-win team that’s earned a 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. And that should be good enough, now as we enter this month.”
___
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP mobile app). AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball
