HARTFORD – The first sign of trouble for UConn last night at the Hartford Civic Center was visible in pregame warmups. The layup lines looked a little short.
Leading scorer Richard “Rip” Hamilton and leading rebounder Jake Voskuhl watched last night’s Big East game against Syracuse dressed in street clothes, sidelined by injuries.
Hamilton missed the game because of a right thigh contusion.
Voskuhl’s injury, a stress fracture of the left foot, was considered more serious and should keep the junior center out for longer than Hamilton will be sidelined.
“We’ll get a better idea of how long our bench is,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said of playing shorthanded.
Calhoun said he is hopeful Hamilton can return “by the weekend,” but said he fears Voskuhl’s injury is a “much more long-term thing.”
Short-handed, the Huskies put several streaks on the line against the 21st-ranked Orangemen.
UConn, ranked second in The Post’s 070 . 0019.08Top 25 and No. 1 in both the AP and coaches’ polls, went into the game with a 19-0 overall record and 11-0 Big East mark. The Huskies had won 16 consecutive Big East games, two shy of their own record, set during the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons. The Huskies also took a 31-game homecourt winning streak into the nationally televised game.
Hamilton, a junior averaging 22.1 points per game, suffered his injury late in Saturday’s game at the Garden against St. John’s when he took a sharp knee to the thigh. The Big East pre-season Player of the Year attempted to run without success during Sunday’s practice and scratched from last night’s game when he didn’t feel improvement.
Voskuhl, averaging 6.5 points and 7.2 rebounds per game, could not pinpoint when or how he was injured. He has battled similar foot problems since high school. He was examined Monday at the UConn Medical Center in Farmington by foot specialist Dr. Raymond Sullivan.
The Huskies have greater depth behind Hamilton than behind Voskuhl.
Sophomore Albert Mouring, a 40 070 . 0009.06percent shooter on 3-point attempts, and senior Rashamel Jones, a starter as a sophomore, will get most of Hamilton’s minutes.
Second-string center Souleymane Wane, a decent shot-blocker, has trouble catching the ball and doesn’t do much with it when he does catch it. Wane has a .326 field goal percentage and shoots just .423 from the line. Antric Klaiber also will get some minutes in the middle during Voskuhl’s absence.
For offense, Calhoun can go to first-year sophomore Edmund Saunders, a skilled post player shooting .565 and averaging 6.6 points in 17.4 minutes per game.
Voskuhl had started 85 consecutive games since he cracked the starting lineup Dec. 4, 1996 at Pittsburgh. Hamilton had made 86 consecutive starts. During the past two seasons, UConn’s starting lineup of Voskuhl, Hamilton, Kevin Freeman, Khalid El-Amin and Ricky Moore compiled an overall record of 48-5. They had started 36 consecutive games as a unit before last night. The unit last was broken up Jan. 24, 1998, when Freeman missed a game at the Carrier Dome because of a hairline fracture of the right wrist. 070 . 0000.00 -00003