The day the Associated Press announced its preseason Top 25, UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley described his team’s third-place finish as a show of disrespect.
Hurley argued that the two-time reigning national champion Huskies earned the right to start the new season No. 1 after powering through the previous two NCAA Tournaments “like no one has in a very long time.”
“We dominate for the [2023] national championship, we lose all the players, and then we’re even better.” “We dominate even more, we lose all the players… I think we should have voted first.”
The idea that AP voters undervalued UConn unraveled last week in Maui when the Huskies looked stunningly unprepared for their first tests of the season. They dropped three games in three days and finished last at the Maui Invitational, suffering narrow losses to Memphis and Colorado before suffering an 18-point shellacking against Dayton.
These results suggest that AP voters showed excessive deference to UConn’s championship status and did not weigh heavily enough on the departure of four 2024 NBA Draft picks. No team that defeated UConn in Maui is ranked higher than 24th on KenPom . Colorado was projected to finish next to last in the Big 12 entering the season.
To say UConn (5-3) is college basketball’s biggest disappointment to date is a massive understatement. This is a Huskies team that entered the season with aspirations of becoming the first men’s college basketball program since John Wooden-era UCLA to win three consecutive national championships.
For UConn to even approach preseason expectations, the Huskies must improve dramatically defensively. They allowed 1.34 points per possession against Memphis, 1.20 against Colorado and 1.31 against Dayton. Opponents hunted Aidan Mahaney to attack him off the dribble and took advantage of rotational miscommunication that created wide-open threes.
UConn also severely misses Donovan Clingan’s ability to protect the rim and defend the low post without making mistakes. The Huskies’ top players, Samson Johnson and Tarris Reed Jr., committed foul after foul against Memphis and Colorado, forcing Alex Karaban to play out of position at center.
The offense is loaded with outside shooters, but so far it’s not lethal enough to make up for UConn’s defensive woes. Neither Mahaney nor fellow senior guard Hassan Diarra are as capable playmakers as two-time Final Four MVP Tristen Newton.
Finally, Hurley can’t sabotage his team himself with sideline outbursts like he did against Memphis and almost the next day against Colorado. Yes, the Maui free throw differential was not in UConn’s favor. Yes, some boundary calls at key moments went against the Huskies. But Hurley can’t lose his cool and risk more technical fouls. This UConn team doesn’t have the margin for error to survive that.
Ultimately, UConn probably isn’t as bad as it seemed in Maui, when the quality of opponents exposed defensive issues and three games in three days left no time to fix them. The next three games against Baylor, Texas and Gonzaga will provide a better barometer of whether the Huskies are actually in freefall or just a notch below their impossibly high levels of the previous two seasons.
Of course, UConn isn’t college basketball’s only disappointing team this season. Here are five more programs that failed to meet high preseason expectations:
ARIZONA (3-4)
In his first three seasons in Tucson, Tommy Lloyd won 88 games, captured two Pac-12 titles and claimed two conference tournament crowns. It could be difficult for Lloyd to meet that standard in year four if the first seven games are any indication.
It was an ominous sign when Arizona gave up 103 points to Wisconsin. And then a week later the Wildcats lost at home to Duke by 14. Then the Wildcats dropped two of three games in the Bahamas last week, topping Davidson in the Battle 4 Atlantis quarterfinals before suffering close losses to Oklahoma and West Virginia.
The three-point line has been a major source of Arizona’s woes. The Wildcats are shooting an anemic 31% from behind the arc and have surrendered 12 or more threes in all four of their losses. Opposing defenses like to let Caleb Love shoot erratically from three-point range, rather than giving up lanes to Jaden Bradley or giving Motiejus Krivas or Trey Towsend space in the low post.
HOUSTON (4-3)
Houston has gotten off to an unexpectedly rough start, despite the return of almost every key player except All-American guard Jamal Shead from last year’s 32-win team. The Cougars have lost to the three best teams they have faced so far this season, each in painful fashion.
Auburn recovered from a nine-point deficit in the second half to defeat Houston 74–69 on November 9. Alabama erased a four-point deficit with less than three minutes remaining in regulation to eliminate the Cougars in overtime a few weeks later. Last Saturday it was San Diego State’s turn. The Aztecs stormed back from an 11-point deficit in the second half and then survived potential game-winning and tying shots at the end of regulation time and overtime.
So what’s wrong with a Houston team that started the season No. 1 in every major computer metric? Kelvin Sampson complained to reporters on Saturday that his team “doesn’t have a guy yet,” as Shead, Marcus Sasser and Quentin Grimes have been for the Cougars in recent years.
“We’re a good team, but that might be all we are right now,” Sampson added. “Just a good team. We’re not really good or very good. We’re good enough to play all these really good teams because we’ve been in a position to beat them all. You could argue we could be 7-0, but you could also argue we’re at the point where we should be 4-3. Reality says we are somewhere in the middle.”
CREIGHTON (5-3)
The warning signs first emerged during Creighton’s season-opening win over UT Rio Grande Valley. Preseason All-American 7-footer Ryan Kalkbrenner piled up 49 points and the Bluejays needed almost all of them to put away a Vaqueros team that lost 25 games last season.
Things got worse when Creighton led the league and lost by double digits at home to in-state rival Nebraska. Then last week, the Bluejays dropped their first two games of the Players Era Festival against San Diego State and Texas A&M before salvaging the seventh-place game against Notre Dame.
Why hasn’t Creighton lived up to its preseason top-15 ranking? Injuries have taken their toll. Kalkbrenner, Steven Ashworth and Pop Isaacs all finished a match. Mason Miller has already missed two.
It also hasn’t helped that a team that built Greg McDermott with outside shooters on the surrounding Kalkbrenner consistently failed from three-point range. Creighton has hoisted 110 3-pointers in its three losses and sunk just 31. That 28.2% clip won’t be enough if the Bluejays want to challenge Marquette and UConn in the Big East.
MIAMI (3-4)
Thanks to the returns of veteran guards Nijel Pack and Matthew Cleveland and the arrival of a promising transfer class, Miami was expected to bounce back from last year’s disappointing sub-500 season. Instead, the Hurricanes haven’t come close to performing like a team projected to finish in the top third of the ACC.
It was bad enough when they went winless at the Charleston Classic and suffered back-to-back losses to Drake, Oklahoma State and VCU. Then they came home and lost their get-right game to a Charleston Southern team that had not beaten a DI opponent before this season.
Yes, Miami’s leading scorer Nijel Pack did not play against Charleston Southern. No, that’s not a good enough excuse. The Buccaneers were ranked in the 300’s at KenPom and came into the game as a 24-point underdog.
Poor defense has been a problem for Miami all season. That includes Cleveland’s regression from NBA prospect to non-factor. The poor start could quickly overwhelm Miami with games against Arkansas, Clemson and Tennessee next.
VILLANOVA (4-4)
A Villanova program that missed the NCAA Tournament in Kyle Neptune’s first two seasons opened his third year in exactly the way he couldn’t afford. The Wildcats have dropped four of their first eight games, including a disastrous home loss to Columbia and a road loss at cross-town rival Saint Joseph’s.
Villanova wasn’t expected to finish in the top half of the Big East this season, but the Wildcats aren’t even meeting modest expectations for the season. They have yet to win against a top 200 KenPom opponent. They don’t seem to have enough talent around Eric Dixon, the conference leader.
That Villanova has fallen so far so quickly is an indictment on Neptunus, given the powerful program he inherited. Under Jay Wright, Villanova captured the 2016 and 2018 national championships, won at least a share of seven of the previous nine Big East regular-season titles and sent a slew of impact players to the NBA.
The Wildcats haven’t made the NCAA tournament since and may not get there this season.
