SEATTLE -– The UConn men’s basketball team wrapped up its nonconference slate with a 76-63 win in a not-so-neutral game against Gonzaga in the Climate Pledge Arena on Friday night.
Donovan Clingan poured in 21 points on 8 of 11 shooting from the field with eight rebounds.
Cam Spencer scored 13 of his 15 points in the first half and Alex Karaban had 11 with eight coming in key moments down the stretch. Tristen Newton added nine on seven shots and had three rebounds and five assists.
“We were thrilled to get this game on the schedule, we’ve got so much respect for Gonzaga and their program and Mark Few, one of the truly elite coaches, a hall of fame-level coach. And to play in this building in a great sports city like Seattle, in an unbelievable arena, we walked in here today and were blown away by the place,” head coach Dan Hurley said.
“But I thought it was a heck of a performance and particularly Donovan, against that front line, to have that type of game. That’s as good a frontline as there is in the country in terms of that four-man rotation they have.”
Clingan, at “the best he’s moved around the court” since his offseason foot injury, battled with 6-foot-9, 240-pound Graham Ike as well as Ben Gregg and Braden Huff, both 6-10, and held that trio to just 12 points combined.
He had a steal and a pair of blocks, even more disruptions, on the defensive end. And, after Hurley got on him about his rebounding in the last game against Arkansas Pine Bluff, Clingan grabbed four off the offensive glass against what was the nation’s 12th-best rebounding team entering Friday night.
“The last couple days, finally waking up and not being sore and feeling 100% was something that really gave me a lot of confidence and a lot of momentum coming into this game,” Clingan said. “I just had to go out there and attack the bigs and help my team win in any way possible. I knew I had a little bit of a size advantage on them and I was just trying to get back to finding my identity that I was playing with last year, attacking the offensive and defensive glass and just finishing through contact. I feel like I’m starting to find that again.”
UConn went to Clingan early for six quick points and, with a stepback 3 from Newton, started the game on a 9-2 run. Gonzaga, with four-man Anton Watson and former Creighton point guard Ryan Nembhard doing most of the scoring, kept its deficit within five points for much of the first half.
But then the game came to Spencer. The graduate guard made back-to-back 3s to give UConn a 32-24 lead at the 5:44 mark. After his third 3-pointer of the game, Spencer’s fourth consecutive make, he picked up a loose ball and passed up to Stephon Castle who finished a euro-step layup in transition. His freshman classmate Solo Ball, who remained in the starting lineup Friday, hit a 3-pointer about a minute later that gave UConn a 45-32 lead with less than a minute to go.
Nembhard, who finished with 15 points, made another layup before the end of the half, cutting UConn’s lead to 45-34 at the break.
UConn assisted on 11 of its 17 made field goals and shot 63% from the field in the opening half, making 7 of 9 from 3 (78%) to make up for Gonzaga’s 8-1 advantage on the offensive glass.
Clingan converted a 3-point play under the basket and made a pair of free throws to extend UConn’s lead to 52-36, forcing Gonzaga head coach Mark Few to call a timeout just over two minutes into the latter half.
The Huskies went quiet for about five minutes without a made field goal after a layup from Karaban made it an 18-point game. Shooting struggles continued as UConn began the second half shooting just 6 of 13 from the field, 0-for-5 from 3, and turned the ball over five times in the first 12 minutes after the break as Gonzaga brought the score back to within 11.
Hassan Diarra checked into the game around the 12-minute mark and made a series of defensive plays to maintain UConn’s lead. After about a five-minute stint, he returned to the court with the lead back down to 10 and found Clingan for a momentum-snatching alley-oop. He finished a transition layup after a Newton steal on the next possession and added a pair of free throws to push the lead back to 15 with about two minutes left.
“Difference-maker,” Hurley said of Diarra. “The thing that we’ve been harping on, the difference between last year’s team and this year’s team is that defensive intensity, that identity to be able to win a game by getting stops. We shot the cover off the ball in the first half and then the second half, we didn’t make a 3. We won it with defense which I think is big – that’s what elite teams do. I think (Diarra) triggered that, I think Steph helps with a lot of that as well.”
Diarra finished with nine points, four rebounds, an assist and a block in 15 minutes off the bench.
Friday’s game was a rematch of last year’s Elite Eight, which UConn dominated and won 82-54 in Las Vegas before going on to claim the program’s fifth national championship. On their quest for back-to-back titles, the win over Gonzaga was UConn’s second in three top 10 matchups in the last two weeks.
Now the attention turns to Big East play, which UConn (10-1) begins on the road at Seton Hall on Wednesday and is then set to host Rick Pitino, Nahiem Alleyne and St. John’s on Dec. 23, before the holiday break.
“We played the top teams in the country so playing those teams and now playing in the best league in the country, I feel like it’s given us good momentum,” Clingan said. “The new season starts Wednesday and we’ve got to give everything we’ve got every day because the Big East is a battle.”
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