By Eric Lucio
The UCONN Huskies avenged the 2023 loss in Allen Fieldhouse in a comeback victory of 61-56 against the Kansas Jayhawks on Tuesday night.
Although the Jayhawks were leading for 25 and a half minutes of the game, it was the Huskies’ rebounding and Kansas’ efficiencies in the second half that led to UCONN’s seventh win of the season.
Despite the veterans redshirt senior Alex Karaban and junior Solo Ball’s combined 28 points, the winning factors were freshmen Eric Reibe and Braylon Mullins, tallying 29 points to give the Huskies the edge.
“Eric’s been a monster for us to start the year, and we got a huge lift from Braylon,” UCONN head coach Dan Hurley said. “Our two young guys were just so good, and then obviously, [Caraban], the two-time champion, just had an awesome second half.”
After the Huskies got outrebounded by nine in the first half, they grabbed 15 more boards than Kansas in the second, scoring 14 second chance points to Kansas’ five.
“I actually thought in the first half, we did a really good job of rebounding the ball,” Kansas head coach Bill Self said. “In the second half, they physically were much quicker to [the ball], and our bigs didn’t rebound, and our guards didn’t clean up at all.”
Self also noted the Jayhawks’ lackluster offense as a key factor in the loss, saying that they tried to play too much isolation ball, which is not Kansas’ strong suit without star freshman Darryn Peterson. Peterson was ruled out Tuesday morning with the hamstring injury that’s sidelined him since Nov. 7. Kansas went 5-20 from the field in the second half, only staying in the game with free throws.
“The lack of execution was pretty much self-inflicted, and that led to some really poor possessions,” Self said. “We got the ball [to start] the second half, [we were] right under the basketball the first two possessions, and missed two-footers… five field goals in a half, that’s not very good.”
The Jayhawk crowd did everything they could to give Kansas a fighting chance. Hurley noted the pressure and incredibility of playing in the Allen Fieldhouse atmosphere, which reached 125 decibels at one point, calling it the best place to play college basketball in the country. Karaban, who played in the loss in Allen Fieldhouse in 2023, said that winning in this environment after losing the first time made it even sweeter.
“This place is amazing… Now [playing in Allen Fieldhouse for the] second time, you get the idea of what to expect,” Karaban said. “There weren’t really nerves, but as much as I love this team, in the back of my head, I kept saying, ‘do this for the [2023-2024] team.”
That crowd helped the Jayhawks come out swinging early in the first half, capitalized by back-to-back threes from redshirt sophomore Jamari McDowell that surged the Jayhawk crowd. The sequence ignited a plethora of Jayhawk crowd-shakers, including slams from freshman Kohl Rosario and sophomore Flory Bidunga, and eight straight points by redshirt sophomore Elmarko Jackson in under a minute.
Kansas’ efforts were enough to secure a four point lead at the half, but it was all UCONN in the final 20 minutes.
The Jayhawks came out of the break cold, going eight minutes without making a field goal. The drought allowed for a Connecticut comeback at the 11-minute mark when Karaban took the 45-44 lead with a layup.
After UCONN extended the lead to six with five minutes remaining, a Bidunga posterizer and a three from senior Melvin Council Jr. cut the deficit to just one point.
The Huskies kept composure with some buckets by Karaban and Reibe, and after McDowell missed a layup down three with nine seconds left, all it took was two free throws by Mullins to ice the game.
“I thought we showed resilience, the mental toughness, just to grind out a way to score some field goals late with some offball movement, and [we] just gutted it out,” Hurley said. “That’s what champions do.”
Looking ahead to Kansas’ next game against Missouri, Self spoke on Peterson’s status.
“Tomorrow will be [Peterson’s] off day, and then, hopefully, if there’s no setback, we’ll practice him with us on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, full speed,” Self said. “He’s 90, 95% [healthy right now], but he wasn’t 100 [percent today], and I said, all alone, we’re gonna wait until he is [fully healthy].”
The Jayhawks, now 6-3, will take on Missouri at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City on Sunday, Dec. 7 at 12 p.m. central time.