NEWARK, N.J. — The fifth-ranked UConn men’s basketball team took a trip down to the Prudential Center, on a mission to avenge the heartbreaking loss it suffered on Seton Hall’s home court last season. Instead, all this year’s Huskies got was another nightmare.
On the scoreboard, it was a 75-60 loss to the Pirates. UConn’s widest margin of defeat since the 2019-20 season, when it lost on the road at USF by the same score. On the court, 7-foot-2 star center Donovan Clingan limped to the locker room with an apparent foot injury early in the second half and did not return to the game. Head coach Dan Hurley said postgame that Clingan suffered a sprained ankle, but had no further update to his status.
The loss is UConn’s fifth in six conference openers under Hurley. It is also the third straight season that UConn (10-2) lost to Seton Hall on the road.
“I’m just really stunned by just how unprepared I had these guys for a really tough, physical conference game. Credit Shaheen (Holloway), credit Seton Hall, they just kind of punked us there in Big East Conference fashion,” Hurley said. “That was not reminiscent of a top team, that was a pretty embarrassing performance for all of us, myself first in line. To have one of my teams in a conference opener, go on the road and perform like this, I’m having a hard time even looking you guys (reporters) in the eyes when you ask me a question right now, because it’s a little feeling of shame there.”
The Huskies, struggling to shoot all night, made just 22 of their 58 shots from the field (37.9%) and went just 4 of 21 (19%) from 3-point range, their second-worst shooting night of the season. On the other end, Seton Hall made 51.8% of its shots from the field (29 of 56) and was 3 of 8 from beyond the arc.
“We weren’t ready to play, we didn’t show up, we weren’t the tough team, we didn’t play to the UConn identity, we didn’t do anything that we had done during the nonconference slate,” said one of this year’s leaders, Alex Karaban, after scoring nine points on 3 of 12 shooting with eight rebounds. “That’s what happens. You don’t show up ready in the Big East, you get your ass kicked… I don’t know if we were too complacent in the nonconference, I don’t know if we thought this would be an easy game, but clearly no game is easy in the Big East.”
Clingan, before he went down, was having a dominant night in the low post and finished with 14 points (7 of 12) and seven rebounds in just 13 and a half minutes.
“(When Clingan went out) it took away a lot of our offense because he was really dominating down there,” said fifth-year point guard Tristen Newton. “We’ve got to figure out how to play without him in the game because he’s 7-2, he can’t play 38 minutes. So we’ve got to figure out how to play without him and just maintain the level of play that we have with him in the game.”
Newton, who led the Huskies with 16 points and six rebounds despite six turnovers, brought out his telephone celebration almost right away after he hit UConn’s first two 3-pointers of the game in as many minutes, but then the game hit a lull. Shot clock issues and a number of fouls called made for an incredibly slow pace over the next five minutes before UConn used a 10-2 run to get a double-digit lead, 20-10, with about nine minutes left until the break.
But then Kadary Richmond, took over. Speeding past UConn’s defense as if defenders were cones in a practice drill, the senior point guard scored seven consecutive points and gave The Hall its first lead of the game around the five-minute mark.
Seton Hall (8-4) closed the opening half on a 24-9 run and UConn, down 34-29, went into the break trailing for just the second time this season – Kansas led 38-31 at halftime of UConn’s lone nonconference loss.
Social media reacts to UConn men’s basketball’s stunning loss at Seton Hall
“We were dreadful,” Hurley said. “We lost so many one-on-one battles out there, that was embarrassing. That was truly embarrassing. We’re one of the best teams in the country at guarding twos and and we just completely got out of sorts. I didn’t like our energy to start the game, even up 10 it felt like fools’ gold. We weren’t sharp, it was an ugly game, and then they really got it going.”
Clingan, who scored UConn’s first six points after the break, led the team with 14 before he limped off the court and into the locker room just three and a half minutes into the second half. Karaban, scoreless in the first half, stepped up with a pair of buckets, including his first 3 of the night, but the deficit grew to eight around the 12-minute mark. Clingan returned to UConn’s huddle after about a 16-minute (real time) locker room stay with team trainer James Doran and remained on the bench for the game’s final 11:22.
A 3-pointer from Seton Hall sophomore Jaquan Sanders, his eighth on the season and only the team’s second of the game, brought the Pirates up nine and Richmond made a pair of free throws after a fourth foul was called on Cam Spencer to take an 11-point lead with 8:12 to go.
Richmond, who finished with a game-high 23 points plus eight steals, six rebounds and five assists, drove to the basket and finished through the fifth foul on Spencer to put the Pirates up by 15 points, 66-51, with about four minutes left. He and the rest of the Pirates’ guards, tough and gritty, would not let up on the defensive end and UConn didn’t have enough to fight back, the deficit once growing to as many as 19.
UConn finished the game with 17 turnovers – passing its season-high 14 against Indiana.
“Tomorrow’s video session is gonna be brutal. The accountability is gonna be super high and we’re gonna be brutally honest about how things went here today. But we do have to turn the page quickly, because Saturday we’ve got another Big East game (St. John’s at the XL Center, 8 p.m.) so we’ll react appropriately,” Hurley said.
“When we lose at UConn, everyone hurts.”
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