University of Connecticut Athletics
Huskies Take Miami in Overtime, 83-80
1/11/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
STORRS, CT (January 11, 2003) -- Ben Gordon (Mt. Vernon, NY) scored 26 points and Emeka Okafor (Houston, TX) scored five points in overtime as third-ranked Connecticut outlasted Miami, Saturday, in the Huskies’ BIG EAST opener, 83-80, before a sellout crowd of 10,167 at the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion.
With the win, UConn improves to 10-1, while the Hurricanes drop to 7-6, 0-2 in conference play.
UConn led by three, 71-68 after Gordon hit two free throws with 21 seconds to play in regulation, but Miami’s Darius Rice hit a game-tying three-pointer with 2 seconds to play to force the extra session. Gordon’s long three-pointer at the buzzer was no good.
Rice started the Hurricanes out quickly in the overtime by hitting a three-point shot just 16 seconds in, and followed with a good jumper 44 seconds later to give Miami a 76-73 lead. After Okafor made one of two free throws, he made back-to-back baskets to give the Huskies a 78-76 lead, which they never relinquished. Gordon followed with a three-pointer to give the Huskies a seemingly insurmountable 81-76 lead with 1:44 to play but Paulo Coelho then hit a three-point basket with eight seconds to play and Armondo Surratt missed a potential game-tying three-pointer as time expired in overtime.
Gordon scored 26 points despite shooting just six of 15 from the field, but did connect on four three-pointers and was a solid 10 of 11 from the foul line. Freshman Denham Brown (Toronto, ON) played well when the Husky offense bogged down, and finished with a career-high 18 points, including two free throws with seven seconds to play in overtime. Backcourt mates Tony Robertson (E. Providence, RI) and Taliek Brown (Queens, NY) each scored 11, while Taliek Brown dished out a game-high seven assists. Gordon led UConn with eight rebounds.
Rice and James Jones had a solid outing for the Hurricanes, scoring 28 and 26 points respectively.
Miami shot from the gate quickly, by scoring 14 straight points over 2:35 to take a 14-4 lead. UConn was able to battle back to take the lead with seven seconds to play in the half at 38-36.
UConn returns to action on Tuesday, January 14 when they host league foe Virginia Tech at the Hartford Civic Center. Tip-off is slated for 7:00 p.m. and WTXX-TV 20 will televise the game.
PLAYER QUOTES
UConn Head Coach Jim Calhoun
We looked at Miami’s record and, clearly, they’re not the team that had that record – at least they weren’t today against us. I always try to look at defensive stats and we did a pretty good job. We held them to 39 percent….
Jones and Rice, I thought were just incredibly difficult match-ups. And obviously Jones, as he started to go inside became an incredibly difficult match-up because we didn’t have Emeka to play him inside. And that became a key to the game. And also tells you that Perry did a great job of saying “Ah, no Okafor. Here’s where the ball goes.” And that’s the first time maybe this year that a team has been able to have free reign inside in the lane.
But they’re a good basketball team. It won’t surprise me, because this league is so crazy, that they clearly have a chance to make the NCAA Tournament. I think what they’re trying to do, like us, is get some of the other positions solidified. But those two guys, you don’t have to touch. They are guys that can certainly play basketball after this. Both are very talented kids who put a lot of pressure on you at 6-10. When they go with the big line up they made us look awfully small.
On turnovers
At many points in that game, I thought we were just that far away from being 8 to 10 to 12 where we belonged, but we kept turning the ball over. We kept making some bad plays. We fouled them plus 5, and 30 feet from the basket. We get an outbreak and throw the ball to our point guard, Mike Hayes, and it cost us 5 points. In game situations you just can’t do that type of thing.
On Okafor’s foul trouble
I would be remiss not to say, because of our youth up front, and because we’re still kind of searching at times, we really aren’t the same team without Emeka. I think that was pretty evident. But that isn’t the reason we would have lost. We would have lost because we wouldn’t have made as many good plays with the basketball.
On Big East schedule
After the St. Bonnie’s game I turned to the kids and said “Now the fun begins. Now they’re going to be different. The bar has to be raised and the games are going to be wars.” This year, I’ll tell you what, they are going to be wars. If this is the fifth team in the East, I don’t know what to expect the rest of the way through. There are going to 15 other hellacious wars plus we have to go to North Carolina. We certainly have our work cut out for us.
On Denham Brown
I’ll state the obvious: I thought he was terrific. I thought his plays around the basket were just really good. He was rim-level when he finished plays so you couldn’t block his shot. He did a good job on Rice when he was playing Rice.
On Ben Gordon
I think Ben answered any questions about what he needs to do. He was really sensational.
Ben Gordon
On getting Oklahoma game behind him: I was just playing my game.
On what Miami was doing to take away transition game: Mainly they were playing zone, and they were getting back on defense every time. It was hard for us to run our fast break game, we had to run our offense.
On play of Denham Brown: Denham just stepped up today. Over the last couple of days in practice our focus has been running our offense. He just gets a little anxious sometimes, because he is a scorer and that how most scorers are. I was just telling him to be patient with the offense. He got his career high today just being patient and letting the game come to him.
On huge 3pter capping 8-0 run: It wasn’t really an open look, I came off of a screen from underneath and I got on the wing, the guy played me pretty well. I had it in my mind that I was going to try to make something happen. And I happened to rise up over him and make the shot
On Emeka Okafor: We just tried to keep him in the game mentally. He wasn’t having a great game. The refs kind of took him out with the foul calls and everything but he came through at the end.
On having to step it up with Emeka Okafor out
He's a great presence on defense. That showed when he came out of the game, they started hurting us down low. I definitely had to keep what I was doing on offense and at the same time try and give a little more help down for the bug guys.
On difficulty playing Miami
It's obvious, they had those two big guys, both 6-10 or 6-11, and they can play inside and outside. I think they were the main reason they stayed in the game.
On over-coming adversity
That's pretty much was the theme for last year's team, and I think it will be for this year too. Coach always helps us stay in it physically and mentally. So I think when the game comes down to it, in a key situation when there's a lot of pressure, I think that's probably when we're our best.
On the guys who filled in for Emeka
Guys like Tooles, Mike, Hilton, JB, and Marcus Whites, they all came in and gave us positive results on defense.
On overtime
I just knew we had to keep doing what we're doing and just lock-down on D. Our offense was fine, we were shooting over 50%, so it was just defensive pressure that was the key.
On playing Jones and Rice
That's their whole team right there, but if you shut them down their team doesn't have a chance of winning. Jones and Rice are real good players because they play both inside and outside.
On decreasing the number of first half turnovers
The first half we were just out of character with the 14 turnovers. That's just not us. We have real good guards. We were being too careless with the ball.
Taliek Brown
We were happy with the win, but we would rather have a larger margin of victory. I thought we were capable of beating them by a couple more points.
On why they weren’t able to put Miami away: They shot like 20 more shots than us, that could be a reason. They got to the free-throw line a lot too.
On playing without Emeka: We have a lot of versatile, and talented people on our team. Anybody is liable to step up when someone is having a bad game. Everybody just had to play hard with him out of the game.
I was just thinking, the freshmen have to step up these days. That when Denham was put to the test today, Marcus came in and gave us two free-throws. The freshman really stepped up for us today.
On tough games versus Miami: Every single year it is like a dog fight out there.
I told everyone in the locker room, this is how it is going to be all year. Nothing is going to be easy. No one is going to just give us another Championship. Every game we are going to have to work.
Emeka Okafor
On his long strange game: It was an awkward game for me. Things didn’t go my way. I just couldn’t get in any type of rhythm, once I did I’d get a foul and they’d take me out of the game. That’s the way it goes sometimes. As long as we win the game, that’s OK. It just kind of compounds and gets you frustrated. You have to try your best to keep calm and keep focused and try to help your team win the game.
Tony Robertson
On the elbow from Rice
I got upset because he had been throwing them the whole game. I don't play like that. I get pressured all the time but I don't throw elbows to get guys off of me. If you have to throw elbows to get someone off of you, you shouldn't be playing. You should try and dribble by me if I'm pressuring you like that. I got pretty upset…And the next time down he caught the ball and tried to do it again, but luckily I ducked under that one.
We never gave up. We never stopped. We never thought for a second we were going to lose the game.
Denham Brown
On stepping up today
I felt I had to come even within myself…I didn’t really perform in Oklahoma as well as I wanted to. I felt like I needed a bounce-back game and this was one of them…Coach was telling me to stay aggressive, stay intense.
How difficult was it to play defense against them
It was just unusual. Their big guys, 33 and 21, were 3-point shooters. They were even better than some of their guards on the perimeter. So a lot of our big guys had trouble, it created foul trouble, and we couldn't really run the defense we wanted to run on them.
On making the clutch free throws
We practiced that a lot in practice. I didn't really think of the pressure, because you can't think of that or you'll miss the foul shots. I just kept it in my head that it was a practice shot – boom – sank both of them.
On defending Rice
He comes around a lot of screens…Also he's 6-10 so he can go to the post on you. So he's really hard to defend.
On his first Big East game
It's living up to the expectation of being a hard-nosed league.
Miami Head Coach Perry Clark
Obviously this was just another one of those Miami-Connecticut type of games. I thought the most important part of the game was right there in the second half where we had the lead, Okafor was on the bench, and the guys come in off of the bench, went on a run and not only cut our lead, but they took our lead. I thought that was a really important, decisive part of the game because it seemed like we were playing very well, we had control of the game, we were doing the things we wanted to do, we were making shots, and then we had 4 turnovers in the last 2 minutes which really hurt us and allowed them to get out and run out. I thought Ben Gordon stepped up in the 1st half, he had17, and he just did a tremendous job of putting them on their back and carrying them. In the 2nd half, it was just a BIG East basketball game.
I thought Taliek Brown…I think he is the most underrated point guard in our league…from a standpoint that you don’t hear a lot of national talk about him…but they are 10 and 1 because of him. He really gets into the lane, he creates a lot of things, he keeps pressure on the defense and he is able to get the shooter really good looks.
I thought that Darius and James both played very well….maybe I played them too long, I probably should have rested them a little longer than I did…but when I looked down the bench I didn’t like what my options were. They have a lot of pride and character.
On what this game showed about his team: I thought we played really good basketball. I thought we stepped up, executed a lot better. I thought we got the ball where we wanted it to go. I think Darius Rice certainly came ready to play tonight. It shows that we can play with a lot of people. We were right there with Florida, and with this team, #3 in the country, we were right there with them. Certainly when they (Rice, Jones) come to play, we can play with anybody. We need them to come to play every night.
The margin between victory and defeat is very thin.
