Every win counts the same as the UConn men’s basketball team continues its pursuit of a Big East regular-season title. That includes a game like the top-ranked Huskies have in store for Wednesday, as heavy favorites on the road against last-place DePaul.
Dan Hurley, the Huskies’ head coach who would much prefer a top-five matchup – like the one on deck for Saturday against No. 4 Marquette – is focused on weeding out the human nature element that frustrated him during the second half of Saturday’s blowout at Georgetown. Measuring his team only against the standard it has set for itself, Hurley also noted that the Huskies “didn’t play well” against DePaul when they met in early January, a 29-point UConn win in Storrs without center Donovan Clingan.
“The benefit for us is this time of year you have to be playing championship-worthy basketball if you want to pursue championships at this point. There’s a ton to gain by winning and playing to the standard,” Hurley said. “And we look around college basketball and see just teams in general struggling on the road or in conference games period, so it’s a chance to get another road win.”
UConn is 5-2 on the road this season, 5-1 in Big East play, with its two toughest road trips yet to come against Creighton (Feb. 20) and Marquette (March 6). Prior to games tipping off Tuesday night, the Huskies have a 2 1/2-game advantage over Marquette and a four-game lead on Creighton in the Big East standings.
DePaul, on the opposite end of the spectrum, has yet to win a game in the league this year.
“Playing those big, high-level games is not going to affect your seeding a great deal if you’re unsuccessful, whereas these types of games, the Quad 3/Quad 4 road games, they’re brutal games to play because they’re loseable games and they could potentially wreck months of great work,” Hurley said. “And then the human nature piece with your team and with young people, especially when it’s been so long since you’ve lost a game.
“Just really trying to hammer that home to our players: If we stray from what we do, if we get away from our identity, we’re as vulnerable as any team in the country.”
UConn enters Wednesday’s game having won 12 in a row, the nation’s longest active winning streak and the longest in the Big East since Villanova also won 12 consecutive in 2015. The 22-2 start is the program’s best since it began the 2008-09 season winning 24 of its first 25…
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