Sports

Huskies become aggressor to outslug Spartans

The script for Connecticut’s victory over Michigan State on Sunday was written on a dry-erase board in the Huskies’ locker room.

The first line of that script was to “Hit First.” Mission accomplished.

The Huskies were the more physical team Sunday, beating up the Spartans, who have become known for being one of the toughest teams in the NCAA Tournament each March. Now, because of that physicality, UConn is heading to Texas for the Final Four.

“Our game plan was simple: We wanted to hit first,” UConn coach Kevin Ollie said. “Everybody was kind of picturing them as the giant, and we didn’t want to wait for the giant. We wanted to go meet our giant. And that’s what we did the first half, we met our giant and we played basketball.”

UConn beat Michigan State inside, holding the Spartans to just six points in the paint. The Huskies defense forced Michigan State to settle for outside shots. The Spartans hit 11 3-pointers and just seven two-point baskets.

Another message on that dry-erase board was “communicate,” with, “If you’re not talking, you’re not playing defense,” written underneath.

The Huskies communicated all day and stopped Spartans’ big man Adreian Payne inside. Nine of Payne’s 13 points came on 3-pointers.

“They definitely tried to force me out and to take jump shots,” Payne said. “It was just, they did a great job in the post of sending backside help. So it was kind of hard to get the ball down low.”

The UConn guards were also active defensively, led by Ryan Boatright, who had four steals. The Spartans turned the ball over 16 times, one shy of their season high, and UConn scored 18 points off those turnovers.

“They tell me all the time that I’m the defensive stopper for the point guards,” Boatright said. “So I take pride in my defense, picking them up 94 feet, the entire length of the floor. Even if I can’t pick a steal, just turning them and turning them and getting them uncomfortable so they can’t run the offense so smoothly, it just helps the team.

“So even though my shots weren’t falling today, I was just trying to do as long as I was on the floor, I was going to do something to impact the game, and today it was the defense.”

Tom Izzo’s Spartans enter every March with the reputation of being as physical as a football team. But they walked out of Madison Square Garden beaten up.

“We’re physical, too,” Ollie said. “Don’t get it mixed up. We are predators out there. And we’re going to go in and we’re going to do a great job. We’re going to not only use our physicality with our muscle, we’re going to use our physicality with our mind. I think that’s what we did tonight.”