Dom Amore: Forget crowd noise and metrics, UConn men have more important work before March Madness

HARTFORD, Conn. — There was a time when a coach calling on fans to show up and be loud for the next big game was considered, you know, a coach calling on fans to show up and be louder.

Pretty standard fare. At UConn, this old concept went viral with a few unusual twists this week. An opposing coach, Georgetown’s always-unpredictable Ed Cooley, actually introduced the topic after the Huskies’ lackluster win Saturday night, as if he were disappointed not to be given a rougher going over. And once that fuse was lit, Dan Hurley did the rest.

In fact, there were only a few hundred empty seats amid 10,000 at Gampel Pavilion on Feb. 14, the biggest dating night on the calendar, and the crowd seemed plenty loud enough down the stretch, but Hurley called for more, reached for the pride of the so-called “Basketball Capital of the World” and, apparently, he got to it. Packed, loud, white-out conditions.

UConn adjusted its ticket policy, allowing students to transfer tickets to try to get a screaming head connected to a fanny in every seat allotted by a ticket. But in these February “dog days” of the season, the Huskies looked tired, slow, banged up on Wednesday night and lost to Creighton, 91-84, leaving Hurley, in his own words, feeling “like an idiot.” The crowd was awesome, he noted, silenced only by UConn’s play.

The decibel drama proved, intentionally or not, to be a deflection from the far more pressing issues plaguing the UConn men’s basketball team at the moment, despite a 24-3 record for which most any Huskies fan would have signed on the dotted line when the season began.

Championships are not decided on the 18th of February, goes without saying. No reason to stick a fork in ’em, but Hurley’s Huskies do seem to have reached a fork in the road, one turn leading to where they want to go, the other toward a canyon spanned by a rickety, old Wile E. Coyote Bridge with a long drop below.

Some on social media like to simply type “… college basketball” to punctuate the sport’s surprising occurrences. In college men’s basketball, teams should never be expected to steamroll through a season, winning every game by 20 points. Even the worst teams have their moments of glory. The best teams will lose a game or two they should’ve won, win a few they should have lost, with conference opponents playing better than their record. They may look overmatched in one game, then beat that very same team in the rematch or, as was the case here, vice versa. UConn won at Creighton by 27 points three weeks earlier, then lost at Gampel, giving up the most points to a visiting conference opponent since, we kid you not, Boston College in February 2003.

Because … College basketball. Following the most dismal game of the season, this might be a good day to recall that three of UConn’s six national championships, 2011, ’14 and ’23, followed a pattern that included a series of impressive out-of-conference wins in November and December, a difficult slog through conference play followed by run to the championship in March. That’s not a prediction for this team, just a reminder that national championships are not the exclusive property of conference champions, nor teams high in the AP Poll, the fashionable metrics, nor No.1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.

UConn has won the ultimate prize as No. 4 and 7 seeds, with seven, eight, nine losses along the way. Even the latter-day gold standard champs of 2024 had three losses, the third coming at Creighton on Feb. 20, before running the table.

Feel better now? … Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Point is, championships are the exclusive property of teams playing their best basketball beginning mid-March, a month from now. And that begs the most concerning question: Is UConn’s best basketball on the horizon, or in the rearview mirror? St. John’s has five losses, but they came months ago. Rick Pitino has the Red Storm, who come to Hartford next week, playing their best ball right now. Villanova needed time to get its legs under new coach Kevin Willard, and the Wildcats are in position to hit the Huskies while they are down on Saturday night in Philly. Seton Hall, fighting to stay on the bubble, comes to Connecticut after that, so the immediate stretch of road looks perilous.

We don’t know all that happens behind the scenes, but going by what we see and hear, there should be less — no, make that zero — concern with crowd size and noise; these things take care of themselves. There should be less concern about Ken Pomeroy’s offensive or defensive ratings; what matters is what the scoreboard and the eyeballs are telling us now. There should be less concern over the seed line.

Even the torrid UConn women’s team provides a relevant parallel here. They had three disheartening losses last season and were not a No. 1 seed, but they played their best basketball at the end and nailed title No. 12. Now they are undefeated and ranked No.1, but they’ve been in a bit of a funk and the conference games have been a little tougher lately, at least by their ridiculous standards. But like any other team, they’ll need their “A Game” again when they get deep into March Madness.

Hurley and the UConn men will, too, and also have a month to figure out just how to get there, to get tired legs fresher, get injured players healthy, fix the defense, adjusting to the way teams are attacking now, figure out the offense this roster is best suited to run and invest in getting the bench players to make more effective contributions with their minutes.

Big East titles, regular season and tournament, are nice to get, but at UConn the ultimate goal is top of sport. If the Huskies are playing their best basketball four weeks from now, they’ll have as good a chance as anyone, as they have, after all, beaten several teams that are now likely to be seeded higher. If they are playing the way they are now, the season will come to an abrupt, hard end. Splat. Because … college basketball.