ST. PETERSBURG – UConn never let Elton Brand breathe last night. They simply wouldn’t let the Duke big man beat them.
“In the first half, they made it really tough to get open looks,” Brand said after UConn’s 77-74 NCAA championship upset at Tropicana Field. “They were dropping down. I give those guys the utmost credit. They were just, you know, fighting the possession every time I touched it.”
Brand didn’t get on the board until 9:52 remained in the first half. He finished with 15 points and 13 rebounds, but never dominated the way a Player of the Year is supposed to dominate.
“They broke our defense down,” Chris Carrawell said. “They outhustled us and beat us on loose balls. Elton played a great game, but Connecticut had a great plan. They doubled on him.”
Brand never could get Jake Voskuhl in foul trouble. “We made some adjustments,” Mike Krzyzewski said. “He got more touches in the second half and it’s obvious they wanted to take that away. It really should have opened up a little bit more for us. I don’t know if we made as many good reads initially on that.”
Brand is expected to become Krzyzewski’s first player to leave early, after two years, for the NBA. Where he won’t be hounded the way he was last night.
“We wanted to double big to big,” Calhoun said. “Elton Brand was a great basketball player and then, only have the same guys rotate to the same spot so it would be much more zone. Sometimes if you have other people coming at him, you get confusion. We had no confusion because we knew where our spots were.”