UConn 76
Utah 44
Ten years from now, the players and coaches on this Connecticut basketball team will not remember Thanksgiving 2003.
Some of it was spent in the Garden, taking free throws for an hour and 15 minutes. Some of it was spent listening to coach Jim Calhoun blast them for the, well, dog of a performance they turned in Wednesday night in a Preseason NIT semifinal loss to Georgia Tech. Center Emeka Okafor spent part of his day at the NYAC getting heat treatment on his achy back.
“There wasn’t a lot of Thanksgiving joy,” Calhoun said. “No one sang, ‘Pass me a drumstick,’ or anything like that.”
But the Huskies left the Big Apple with a good taste in their mouths after bouncing back to crush Utah, 76-44, in last night’s NIT consolation game.
It was Utah’s worst loss in the Rick Majerus era. Connecticut led by as many as 38 and looked every bit the nation’s preseason No. 1 team.
Last night was vintage Connecticut basketball. The Huskies ran. They rebounded. They played relentless defense.
And they made their foul shots. After going 10-for-30 from the line Wednesday night and 1-for-10 on 3-pointers, Connecticut hit 8 of 11 free throws and knocked down 2 of 4 3s.
“I couldn’t be happier with their response to having a situation in which they got outworked in the basketball game,” Calhoun said. “Tonight we were the team that worked hard.”
Utah hadn’t suffered a loss as bad since the 1996 NCAA tournament, when Kentucky posted a 101-70 win.