STORRS, Conn. — Over the sport’s first 8:22, Connecticut scored 26 factors. The Huskies had been getting any shot they wished, threatening to run away from St. John’s at revved-up Gampel Pavilion.
So Rick Pitino went to his full-court press. Over the remaining 31:38, the No. 19 Huskies managed simply 36 factors.
“Sometimes you go into a game with a mindset of how you’re going to play defense, and it totally changes,” Pitino mentioned after the Twelfth-ranked Johnnies surprised the two-time defending nationwide champions 68-62 Friday evening for his or her tenth straight win.
That call modified the sport.
The press contributed to forcing 22 UConn turnovers, which led to 18 St. John’s factors.
When the stress wasn’t forcing Huskies errors, it was taking day off the clock, giving them much less time to get high quality pictures.
They wound up with three shot-clock violations whereas lacking 17 of their remaining 20 3-point makes an attempt, and standout sophomore Solo Ball was blanked after halftime.
“I felt they were shooting the ball too well, and what the press has done for me for 40 years is worn people out legs-wise where they don’t shoot the ball as well,” Pitino mentioned. “It’s at all times been the present that my groups have. If we are able to put on out their legs, they received’t shoot it as effectively. They had been coming at us, and so they had been getting too many simple pictures. So I felt the full-court press would take somewhat starch out of their pictures, take some time within the backcourt and make us extremely aggressive.
“We pressed more than we usually have, but that’s because of what they were doing to us offensively early on.”
Pitino recalled an NCAA Event sport in 2005 because the coach of Louisville when the opponent, West Virginia, was unconscious from 3-point vary.
So he ditched the matchup zone for man-to-man, which the Cardinals hadn’t performed all 12 months.
They rallied to advance to the Remaining 4.
“Sometimes, your game plan goes out the window,” he mentioned, “because the other team tears it apart.”
UConn star freshman Liam McNeeley returned after a monthlong absence from a excessive ankle sprain and scored 18 factors in 29 minutes off the bench.
This marked St. John’s first win in entrance of followers at Gampel Pavilion since 2000. … The final time the Johnnies began 12-1 in Huge East play was 1984-85.
