After sitting through today’s 73-51 shellacking at the hands of St. John’s in the first round of the Big East tournament, Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun wouldn’t say that his team would be playing in the NIT if it was awarded a bid.
“I’m going to sit down, and the best thing for me to do and my staff to do is to kind of contemplate,” Calhoun said. “I guess I have to talk to the athletic director, and I’ll talk to him. Obviously he makes the final judgment … he runs the athletic department.”
It’s been an up-and-down season for the UConn (17-15), who entered the season ranked 12th in the preseason Associated Press poll and boast wins over West Virginia, Texas and at Villanova. But the Huskies have lost four straight games and showed no life at any point in today’s game, leaving Calhoun to wonder if they have anything left in the tank.
“It’s always a good time to make sure you look at your team, see what they have,” he said. “Eight games (decided) by four points and under, we lost all of them. That took an awful lot out of the team.
“I want to make sure if they step back on the court to play a basketball game that they would be able to bring emotion, energy and all the things you should bring to competition.”