Kevin Ollie wanted to erase the lopsided loss from memory immediately, so watching film of Connecticut’s 33-point loss at Louisville March 8 wasn’t even considered.
Instead, the second-year head coach showed his players film of one of their finest performances of the season — a last-second win over Florida.
“I just wanted to show them Florida was No. 1 and we can beat No. 1,” Ollie recalled. “We have already proved it.”
The teams will meet again Saturday night in the Final Four after seventh-seeded UConn’s 60-54 victory over No. 4 Michigan State in the East Regional final at the Garden Sunday afternoon.
In the previous matchup, at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn., Shabazz Napier won the game with a buzzer-beating jump shot. Florida, the overall top seed in the tournament, hasn’t lost since, winning 30 straight games. The
Gators were shorthanded then, without standout freshmen reserves Kasey Hill and Chris Walker.
“It was a dogfight, a tough game, and it came down to one last shot,” Napier said. “And I expect it to be the same, a dogfight. And Coach is going to get us prepared for this game and let’s get down there and do our thing.”
Next weekend won’t be UConn’s first visit to the palatial AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. In early January, Ollie took the Huskies to the Cowboys state-of-the-art facility as a form of motivation. It didn’t pay off immediately — during the road trip Connecticut lost to Houston and SMU — but the ploy worked eventually.
“We definitely have a great feeling, because we took the trip when we were in Dallas, we went to the stadium and looked around, and we told ourselves we’re going to get here.” junior forward DeAndre Daniels said. “We just got to keep working. That’s what we did.”
UConn’s lights-out free throw shooting continued on Sunday. It was 21-of-22 from the free-throw line and is a remarkable 81-of-90, good for a 90 percent clip, during the tournament. The Huskies shot 76 percent at the foul line for the season, ninth-best in the nation.
Napier was named the East Regional’s Most Outstanding Player. He was joined on all the all-region team by Daniels, Michigan State senior forward Adreian Payne, shooting guard Gary Harris and Iowa State forward Dustin Hogue of Yonkers, who scored a career-high 34 points in Friday’s loss to UConn.