The UConn men’s basketball team has already faced Indiana and Texas at Madison Square Garden this season. On Friday, the Huskies will make their first-ever trip to Allen Fieldhouse to take on 2022 national champion Kansas. Then they’ve got games with North Carolina and Gonzaga on the schedule.
But Bryant University head coach Phil Martelli Jr. made some noise on Monday for suggesting the Huskies may not have wanted to play his team.
In answering a question about scheduling difficulties following Bryant’s win over Division III Springfield College, Martelli appeared to call out the Huskies.
“It’s hard. You have certain dates that you’re trying to fill. We were trying to fill this date, and there’s a team up the road that played tonight, who won a lot of games last year that we were trying to go to. They picked a different team in our league to play tonight,” Martelli told reporters, adding that he was talking about a “high-major” team.
Martelli didn’t mention UConn by name, but it’s clear he was talking about the Huskies, who played America East opponent New Hampshire on Monday night. Bryant is located in Smithfield, R.I., about an hour-and-15 minute drive from Storrs. The only other game involving an America East team on Monday was Hampton-UMBC.
“Some of it’s a compliment, I don’t know if I really buy it, but, they don’t want to play you, they don’t want to play you … OK,” Martelli said.
Phil Martelli Jr after beating Division III Springfield:
"There's a team up the road that played tonight, that won a lot of games last year that we were trying to go to. They picked a different team in our league to play tonight.. That was a high major team."@ABC6 @BryantHoops pic.twitter.com/sOqgzwm77Z
— Ian Steele (@IanSteeleABC6) November 28, 2023
Martelli lamented that it’s become hard to schedule at the mid-major level and said he hopes teams like Bryant can begin to schedule games with each other more often.
Bryant is 4-4 this season, but does own perhaps the biggest upset of the season so far, having knocked off then-10th ranked Florida Atlantic on the road, 61-52, on Nov. 18. The Owls, like the Huskies, were a Final Four team last season, and they’ve since rebounded to defeat Butler, Texas A&M and Virginia Tech.
UConn scheduled early-season games with Northern Arizona, Stonehill, Mississippi Valley State, Manhattan and New Hampshire, all mid-to-low major opponents designed to help the team work out the kinks and get ready for the rest of its schedule. They have one more “tune-up” game remaining, against Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Dec. 9.
Despite the Bulldogs’ stunning upset of FAU, it’s hard to imagine UConn was somehow ducking Bryant, especially considering the Huskies opted instead for New Hampshire, which beat Bryant in last year’s America East quarterfinals. Perhaps Martelli was more suggesting that UConn should help out a nearby school.
Martelli, the son of longtime St. Joseph’s coach and current Michigan assistant Phil Martelli, was named Bryant head coach on Nov. 15 after former head coach Jared Grasso resigned.
Bryant still has two more games against high-major opponents on its schedule, at Cincinnati and Ole Miss.
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