During last year’s dominant run to its second straight national championship, Dan Hurley called his group “bulletproof.” Elite offense, elite defense, elite on the glass. Dominant at the rim on both ends. Armed with lottery-level talents, but also veteran college stars who knew what it took to win. Take a punch from that UConn Huskies group, and you usually didn’t get up.
The 2024–25 Huskies? Not so untouchable. They foul far too much, as Hurley would be the first to admit. The defense? The worst by a Hurley-coached team outside of his first season at a new school in his college career, and by a long shot at that. They’ve no-showed first halves, allowed shocking late surges to inferior competition, even lost on their home court for the first time in over two calendar years.
All that said, sleep on the Huskies at your own peril. And the Marquette Golden Eagles found that out the hard way Saturday night. UConn never trailed, led by as many as 22 points early and used clutch late shotmaking to stem the Marquette tide and secure the 77–69 win, its most impressive of the season to date. Consider that just a slight change in mood from getting booed at home for a poor start against the DePaul Blue Demons just three days before.
However, there were plenty of bumps. UConn was two years removed from its last 20-turnover game. The Huskies proceeded to turn it over 25 times Saturday, some forced by Marquette’s disruptive defense, some just the types of lapses and miscommunication that have rarely plagued this group in the last two near-perfect years. Hurley’s team sent Marquette to the free throw line a whopping 20 times in the first half. It got outworked for a few loose balls in key second-half moments as Marquette made its push.
But elite shotmaking cures a lot of ills, and Hurley’s team has often done just that. They certainly did Saturday, going 12-of-19 from beyond the arc, including four in the first four minutes that muted the rowdy ‘National Marquette Day’ crowd in Milwaukee. Leading the charge: sophomore guard Solomon Ball, who continues to put up gaudy numbers in Big East play and seems to have emerged as the Huskies’ top offensive option.
Ball, who bided his time on Hurley’s self-described “superteam” a year ago, now has an unlimited green light to fire away … so much so that his coach will unleash his wrath on him if he doesn’t let loose when open.
“He’s definitely going to yell at me, tell me to shoot the ball,” Ball said. “Just having guys who can space the floor, it just makes it so much harder for us to be guarded.”
Since the calendar flipped to 2025, UConn has played nine games. Ball has scored 15-plus points in all of them, capped by a career-high 25 on Saturday. He’s made multiple threes in all nine. For a team that entered the new year looking for a true offensive alpha to emerge, he has provided a clear answer.
“Every time the ball leaves my hand, I’m thinking it’s going in,” Ball said.
It wasn’t just that Ball scored 25; he delivered multiple backbreaking clutch threes in the second half as Marquette climbed back. Marquette cut the deficit to nine twice in the first 10 minutes of the second half, and both times Ball drilled a three on the ensuing UConn offensive possession. The lead dwindled to seven with just under six minutes to go … on the next trip, sure enough, there was Ball with another three. And the dagger of all daggers, with Marquette in desperate need of a stop after cutting the deficit to six, Ball swished one more home from the corner to send many of the more than 18,000 in attendance to the exits. It was a level of poise you might expect from the current standard-bearers in college basketball, but that didn’t make it any less impressive.
“I thought they had better poise and mental toughness than us tonight,” Marquette coach Shaka Smart said.
Between Ball, Alex Karaban and freshman Liam McNeeley, UConn has three proverbial flamethrowers from distance. The Huskies offense hasn’t had as many teeth in January since McNeeley was sidelined midway through their New Year’s Day win over DePaul with a sprained ankle. He tested that ankle in warmups Saturday but sat out again, though Hurley indicated he’ll likely return next week when the Huskies face the league-leading St. John’s Red Storm. Get him back to full strength, and UConn has an offensive nucleus capable of overwhelming almost anyone on a given night. That leaves the Huskies prone to cold shooting nights and the occasional laid egg, but also clearly capable of beating the best on their best days.
Is that enough to satisfy Hurley, the coach with higher standards than just about anyone? Seemingly not. During one huddle, Fox microphones captured Hurley challenging his group on how Marquette could possibly be playing “more desperate” than they were, given the ups and downs of this hot-and-cold season in Storrs.
Dan Hurley in the huddle:
“With everything we’ve been through this year, how are they more desperate than us?” pic.twitter.com/UfdqmCnxIX
— Ryan Cassidy (@ryancassidycbb) February 2, 2025
“We don’t play with the tenacity our past teams have played with,” Hurley said postgame. “We got bailed out because [Ball] had a great shooting night.”
Maybe that’s just what we’ll have to accept as normal for this year’s UConn, on its quest to three-peat as national champs. Moments that will have Hurley ripping out the little hair left on his head? You bet. But the offensive weapons to out-shoot anyone and a coach who knows more than anyone what it takes to go off in March? The Huskies still are that, and that makes them the dangerous team no one wants to see on their side of the bracket next month.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
