Gordon, Boone Lead Huskies Past Irish;
Advance to BIG EAST Semifinals

Boxscore [.pdf]
Boxscore [.html]

NEW YORK (March 11) – Junior guard Ben Gordon scored 29 points and freshman forward Josh Boone had a career-high 16 rebounds as the University of Connecticut men’s basketball team defeated Notre Dame by a 66-58 score in a quarterfinal game of the BIG EAST Conference Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

UConn, the No. 2 seed in the tournament, improves to 25-6 on the season with the win and now faces the winner of the Providence vs. Villanova quarterfinal game in the semifinals on Friday at 9:00 p.m. That game will be televised nationally by ESPN. Notre Dame is 17-12 and awaits its postseason fate. Boston College and top seed Pittsburgh will play in the other semifinal on Friday at 7:00 p.m.

Connecticut has now won 20 of its last 25 BIG EAST Conference tournament games. UConn advances to semifinal play for the 11th time in school history and holds an 8-2 record in semifinal play.

The Huskies were playing without leading scorer and All-American Emeka Okafor, who is suffering from a stress fracture in his back. His status is considered day-to-day.

Freshman forward Charlie Villaneuva had 16 points and a career-high 13 rebounds and played a career-high 32 minutes of game time. Gordon was 9-of-24 from the field which set a career-high in field goals attempted for the junior guard.

UConn led 37-28 at the half but Notre Dame cut the lead to one, 41-40, with 15:48 left to play as Irish guard Chris Thomas and Chris Quinn each had six points to start the half. UConn then extended its lead back to ten, 56-46, with 9:01 left to play. Notre Dame then cut the lead to three, 59-56, with 3:04 left to play, but Gordon then hit a roll-in with 1:32 left and a three-pointer with 46.3 seconds left to play to make it 64-56 and seal the win. Gordon scored 10 of UConn’s last 14 points. His 29 points marked his highest total since amassing 34 points against Massachusetts on December 30.

Thomas led the Irish with 19 points, but was 1-for-10 from three-point field goal range. Quinn had 14 points and Jordan Cornette led the team with nine rebounds.

UConn opened the game quickly and had a 10 point lead, 14-4, with 13:22 left in the half. The Huskies also led 22-11 with 10:04 left and opened up their biggest lead of the game of 13 points, 37-24, with 2:40 left in the half. Gordon had 15 of his points before intermission.

POST GAME QUOTES
JOHN PAQUETTE: Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva, Josh Boone and Coach Jim Calhoun.

JIM CALHOUN: Well, I was reading in the program that this is the 58th game that I've had the opportunity to coach in the best basketball arena in the world, Madison Square Garden. That tells me a lot of things, mostly I'm old.

We've been able to win some games here, but tonight was really kind of special.

Down, in my opinion, far and away the best player in America, I put a challenge out to this team. Other people may have written us off, we're "disappointments," I noticed even in Connecticut we had a columnist who decided we were "all done."

These kids didn't listen, thank God and in turn believed in themselves. I told each one of them, "We're much more than just Emeka Okafor. He's a great, great basketball player. But inside each one of you," and I think the press in Connecticut knows I said this enough times, this was an opportunity for us, an opportunity to show we're a very, very good basketball team with some very good players. We're fortunate enough to have the finest player in America.

But we have some other guys who can really play. I said, "You've all been talking about it, now you showed it," and son of a gun, they did show it. They were really, really good. I couldn't be happier. There wasn't a lot of technical talk after the game, "you should've..." except for Ben who missed a foul shot. First time we've been perfect all year. Beyond that, Ben was big time.

Our two freshmen just dominated the backboards, were just so impressive. Taliek ran the team. Rashad played as good a defense as he has. I couldn't be prouder of our basketball team. I really thought Mike did such a good job, Chris and Quinn, just so tough.

First half, there were other players like Cornett who were stepping up big time for them, yet we answered every challenge. Couple shots that Ben hit coming down the stretch are reminiscent of Ray, reminiscent of some of the other guys who have been in this program.

These two young freshmen, they were just spectacular between blocking shots, rebounding, and just doing an incredible job of hedging then having to recover all night long, and gave Ben, I know, and Taliek a tremendous, tremendous help with two really great players in Quinn and Chris Thomas, who is just a wonderful basketball player.

Notre Dame was tough, but I thought our kids just really , when it was all said and done, kind of outwilled them, and mainly outrebounded them by dominating the inside game.

Q. Can you talk about the rebounding specifically. Talk about that, early in the game. JIM CALHOUN: The kids came out of the locker room really jacked up. We really talked a lot about you know, we'd be all foolish to say that we didn't notice the guy with the tie on, the assistant coach we had tonight.

I think, hopefully and I can't speak for them hopefully when I challenged them, "but you can do some of those same type of things," they answered to that. And, quite frankly, we played Notre Dame last time, I think Emeka had 15, 16 rebounds. We won the rebounding battle by 23 or 24, and we did the same thing tonight without Emeka, which speaks volumes for what these two kids did.

Q. Ben, it was a great opportunity for you tonight coming back to New York, your hometown, and really doing what you needed to, to help in supporting the fact that you didn't have Emeka in the line up tonight.
BEN GORDON: Yeah, I just looked at it as, you know, a really big opportunity. Emeka is a really good player. I knew myself and some of the other players, would have to pick up the slack. I just came out and tried to stay focused. We got the job done tonight.

Q. Ben, when they cut the lead to three with a couple minutes left, it seemed like you kind of turned it on a little bit, drove for that layup, then hit the three. Was that a point where you kind of said to yourself, "Now's the time"?
BEN GORDON: Yeah, we're in the huddle. The coach said you need to score right now, and a couple of stops. I was fortunate to get to the basket and finish. Came down and did a good job on the other end.

Q. Ben, what do you think you learned about your club today?
BEN GORDON: I mean, we all knew we had talent, I think we just proved to other people who probably didn't believe in us, thought we wouldn't be the same team without Emeka. I already knew everything about our club. I knew even if we didn't have one of our best players, other guys would step up and make key contributions. I'm really proud of them.

Q. Ben, do you have a different mindset when they went from zone to man to man? Are you more aggressive against the man?
BEN GORDON: Yeah, you got more chances, you know, go one on one and create for yourself or for your teammates.

Q. Josh, just talk about the challenge of playing without Emeka, what you felt you needed to do tonight.
JOSH BOONE: You know, it's a real big thing. Like Coach said, last time we played Notre Dame, the kid had 22 rebounds and 16 points. I don't know how many blocks, four or five blocks. We really saw me, Charlie and Hilton needed to step up tonight and I think we did a good job of that. I think we did a great job on the boards and Charlie stepped in and scored tonight. We picked that up.

Q. Charlie, do you think you had to change your game a little bit because you're filling the role of Okafor tonight?
CHARLIE VILLANUEVA: Yeah, I think I had to change my game a little bit. I just tried to play inside more, you know. I tried to stay away from the perimeter, you know, and try to do things that Emeka Okafor does.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports...