Rationalizing Losses
January 07, 2009 02:47 PM | General
(2:48 pm)
The only thing Bob Huggins hates worse than losing is rationalizing losses. Some coaches believe you can learn from defeat. Huggins prefers to learn while winning and that's why he's got nearly 630 of them.
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| Wellington Smith attempts a shot of 7-foot-3-inch Connecticut center Hasheem Thabeet Tuesday night at the WVU Coliseum.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
So while Huggs won’t rationalize Tuesday’s 61-55 loss to No. 5 Connecticut, instead pointing out the missed opportunities his team had coming down the stretch against the Huskies, I will do some rationalizing for him.
That was one very good basketball team West Virginia faced last night.
It had the looks of the 1999 Connecticut team with Rip Hamilton, Kevin Freeman, Jake Voskuhl, Ricky Moore and Khalid El-Amin that completely ran West Virginia out of its own gym.
It also had the looks of the 2004 team with Charlie Villanueva, Denham Brown, Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon and Taliek Brown that blew out the Mountaineers by 30 in Storrs.
Both those UConn teams wound up winning national championships.
The moment you realized that simply playing harder than Connecticut was not going to be enough was when a West Virginia defensive switch had 6-7 Da’Sean Butler guarding 7-3 Hasheem Thabeet in the post. It looked like Butler could comfortably fit underneath Thabeet’s armpit.
Yesterday, Connecticut was able to overcome five turnovers and 3 of 16 shooting from guards AJ Price and Jerome Dyson to beat the Mountaineers by pounding the glass. And when West Virginia took away the lobs to Thabeet and barrel-chested 6-7 forward Jeff Adrien, the Huskies spread the floor and let Dyson and Kemba Walker take over at the end of the game.
Walker made the game’s key basket with 36 seconds remaining to give the Huskies a four-point lead, and Dyson put it on ice with a pair of free throws with nine seconds left.
“We’re playing against 22-year-old men – 22-year-old guys who are a lot bigger and a lot stronger,” Huggins pointed out. “But we competed. It wasn’t that we didn’t compete.”
Connecticut out-scored West Virginia 38-20 in the paint. Adrien had 17 points on 7 of 11 shooting, Thabeet had a 13-point, 13-rebound double-double and 6-9 Stanley Robinson pulled down 15 rebounds.
“Quite frankly, Bobby’s kids weren’t going to let us just throw the ball in there easy,” Calhoun said. “It went both ways – it wasn’t a disadvantage; we just had to be tough enough to stick with it.”
UConn has the size, versatility, athleticism and the smarts necessary to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament this year.
The one concern Calhoun had with his team was answered last night.
“That was as hard as we have played all year and we had to play hard to beat West Virginia,” Calhoun said.
And that brings us back to West Virginia. Freshmen Devin Ebanks, Truck Bryant and Kevin Jones now have something to go off of. When Huggins tells Jones, Ebanks and sophomore John Flowers that they need to get stronger, Jeff Adrien is what they need to look like.
When Huggins talks to Truck Bryant about what it’s like facing fast, athletic guards, Bryant can reference Dyson, Price, Walker and Craig Austrie. You can’t throw lazy lob passes down court to guys you think are wide open. You can’t let Thabeet invite you too close to the basket because he will swat away everything you put up. When you have to take the ball to the rim, you do so with a purpose. And most importantly, you can’t take plays off on defense.
“I told them (in the locker room), ‘I’ve coached almost 900 games and there’s not much going to happen that I haven’t seen.’ You try to warn them and you try to tell them the best you can to prepare them, but (Connecticut) can make more mistakes than we can,” Huggins explained. “They can do that because they have guys who can erase mistakes. They can miss shots because they’re bigger and stronger. They’ve got a whole bunch of guys – and not just veterans – but real good veteran guys.”
Someday soon Huggins is going to have a bunch of real good veteran guys, too.
“There have been a lot of fist fights and tough games in this building and I think when both teams leave, in our case with a win – both teams leave with a lot of respect for each other because that was a really hard-fought basketball game,” Calhoun said.
“There is not a guy on (West Virginia) going to let us get up five or six and then get away,” Calhoun said. “No, they slapped the ball and went down and got a lay up. Quite frankly, I don’t think anybody could have predicted with a minute to go who was going to win that game.
“It really was an incredibly competitive game.”
