The Husky Sports Spotlight Podcast

The Husky Sports Spot­light is a pod­cast high­light­ing major top­ics and sto­ries from around the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut. The show is host­ed by three UConn stu­dents who all share a pas­sion for ath­let­ics. The hosts, Evan Rodriguez, John Lib­er­a­tore, and Kaleb Jen­nings, meet to dis­cuss recent events, upcom­ing sea­sons or games, and notable sto­ries sur­round­ing play­ers, coach­es, and oth­er personnel.

In this episode, our hosts sit down to dis­cuss the upcom­ing bas­ket­ball sea­sons for both the Men’s and Wom­en’s team, the cur­rent state of the UConn Foot­ball team fol­low­ing their 41–7 loss to Duke (9/23/23), and they have a con­ver­sa­tion with spe­cial guest Strat­ton Stave, sports edi­tor at UCon­n’s, “The Dai­ly Cam­pus”. Click the play­er below to lis­ten to the episode, and scroll fur­ther down for a full tran­script of the episode!

Research Links:

• https://www.courant.com/2023/09/24/uconn-football-coach-jim-mora-furious-with-acc-handling-of-jackson-mitchells-disqualification-its-not-okay/
• https://www.anonymouseagle.com/2023/7/26/23664461/big-east-mens-basketball-team-preview-connecticut-uconn-huskies-hurley-newton-clingan-karaban
• https://www.anonymouseagle.com/2023/7/5/23664481/big-east-womens-basketball-summer-preview-connecticut-uconn-huskies-auriemma-bueckers-fudd

Episode Transcript

Evan 0:12
All right now wel­come to the Husky Sports Spot­light where we give the scoop on UCon­n’s most pop­u­lar sports news on cam­pus. I’m Evan Rodriguez.

Kaleb 0:19
I’m Kaleb Jennings.

John 0:20
I’m John Liberatore.

Evan 0:21
And let’s get straight into it. All right, onto the reign­ing nation­al cham­pi­ons men’s bas­ket­ball, obvi­ous­ly they had the nation­al run last year, gets the Nat­ty, they’re obvi­ous­ly look­ing to con­tin­ue some of their dom­i­nance. They’re cur­rent­ly run­ning one of the most sophis­ti­cat­ed offen­sive schemes in the coun­try. And obvi­ous­ly they’re going to be built on some hard nosed clas­sic DAN HURLEY defense, but obvi­ous­ly it’s going to be a chal­lenge. They go in here, they lose some of their more pro­duc­tive play­ers obvi­ous­ly Adama Sanogo, they got Jor­dan, who’s out going into Pel­i­cans, and then Andre on that new look Bucks ros­ter with Dami­an Lil­lard. They’re com­ing back with some peo­ple though, too. I mean, we got Tris­tan New­ton, who’s going to be tak­ing on more of a lead­er­ship role. A bit of a chal­lenge for him obvi­ous­ly, he’s more of a soft spo­ken play­er, but you can see what he can do on the court but who do you guys real­ly like off this ros­ter right now?

John 1:15
I mean, the return of some sopho­more guys you got Kara­ban and Clin­gan, two guys who are going to do a lot of work for you, younger, tal­ent­ed play­ers. Clin­gan obvi­ous­ly a dom­i­nant guy in the paint. Huge play­er, does a lot with the ball, can do a lot off the ball, Kara­ban gets it done no mat­ter where inside, out­side. They did very well last year still got to stay up on things, but they also picked up a lot of guys in this new recruit­ing class.

Kaleb 1:38
I mean, yeah, that’s what I was gonna say I think this recruit­ing class is real­ly gonna be the key to going back to back I mean, you don’t see back to back Nat­tys typ­i­cal­ly ever. Usu­al­ly after a Nat­ty their best play­ers go away to the NBA and go pro, but I think we brought in some guys like Stephon Cas­tle and Solomon Ball can relieve that scor­ing that we had last year from, you’d say Jor­dan Hawkins and I think we even we might even have a high­er ceil­ing than we did last year. Which is crazy to say but these these recruits five star four star recruit some of the best in the nation.

Evan 2:07
Yeah, I mean, obvi­ous­ly COACH HURLEY has said that every­one will be will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly play on this ros­ter. But I mean, it’s going to be tough when you got guys like Cam Spencer com­ing in here. Shot 43.4% from three last sea­son in the Big 10 He def­i­nite­ly has the grit­ti­ness, the tough­ness, to play in a con­fer­ence like the Big East, you know, you’re going up against teams like Creighton or Mar­quette top teams in the nation, not even just in the Big East, but but how do you guys think that he’s going to adjust to this new role in the Big East?

John 2:36
I mean, I think for the most part, it’s going to be it’s going to be pret­ty grad­ual increase in his pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. I mean, we’re going to look at him , you know, com­ing over to the trans­fer por­tal, but I I real­ly think he’s going to make an imme­di­ate impact with his team. UConn is def­i­nite­ly we were a high scor­ing team, you look all through­out our run in the nat­ty last year. Crazy score dif­fer­en­tials for most of the games, but I think this is some­one who’s real­ly going to add a big offen­sive hotspot to the team.

Kaleb 3:01
I mean, I think it’s hon­est­ly been an easy tran­si­tion. When you have a good enough defense like UConn does to relieve that pres­sure off the offense, it makes it pret­ty easy to just slot into a role, espe­cial­ly as a sniper. It’ll make it pret­ty, pret­ty sim­ple for him to suc­ceed and give them a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow as a player

Evan 3:25
All right, mov­ing on to foot­ball man is dis­ap­point­ment in Storrs. You know, they’re com­ing into a sea­son expect­ed to rebound off a pret­ty incred­i­ble sea­son in Jim Mora’s first year in Storrs, six wins. But now they are 0 and 4 as of this record­ing, what do you think is wrong with this team? Guys?

Kaleb 3:45
It’s hon­est­ly, I mean, it comes down to the offense. It’s as sim­ple as that our defense last year was great. This year, def­i­nite­ly lack­ing a lit­tle bit of ener­gy last year, but still show­ing some pos­i­tives and show­ing that they can’t com­pete. But our offense is killing them. We can’t score and it’s just tir­ing these guys out. And at some point, the defense can’t let up for­ev­er. They’re gonna get points dropped in their head. It’s as sim­ple as that.

John 4:06
Yeah, no, I def­i­nite­ly agree. I mean, this defense is kind of what kept us in games for a while this past cou­ple sea­sons, but now it kind of seems like they’re not able to make up for what the offense has been lack­ing. I mean, it’s tough because we’re in a sit­u­a­tion where UConn has­n’t real­ly had a sol­id quar­ter­back sit­u­a­tion these past cou­ple years, and it’s been bounc­ing around whether there’s been an injury or just replace­ments. But I think that’s some­thing that’s real­ly hurt. This team is just not hav­ing one or a real sol­id offen­sive leader and just the lack of con­sis­ten­cy through­out per­son­nel. I mean, after this Duke loss, it was just brutal.

Evan 4:36
I mean, they lost Jack­son Mitchell ear­ly to the tar­get­ing inci­dent. Coach Mora was furi­ous in that postgame press con­fer­ence. Look­ing at the offense, how ner­vous should some­one like Nick Charl­ton be after this loss? He’s been under fire con­sis­tent­ly from the fan base.

John 4:49
I mean, I’m not so sure if it’s offen­sive, schem­ing or if it’s per­son­nel, like I said, I mean, I know it’s been a ques­tion for a while now and obvi­ous­ly, a lot of peo­ple in any of the UConn rooms should kind of be a lit­tle con­cerned with how this sea­son’s been going. I mean, it’s been real­ly, real­ly bad, espe­cial­ly after the expec­ta­tion from last year. But at this point, you can’t real­ly ful­ly blame coach­ing, we haven’t had, like I said, a sol­id quar­ter­back sit­u­a­tion, the offense has­n’t been able to get it done on the field. Play call­ing has been a lit­tle ques­tion­able, but for the most part, you have to have the play­ers that are going to be able to exe­cute and if they’re not able to do it. Sure, you can get rid of the coach­es. But is that real­ly gonna change anything?

Kaleb 5:25
Yeah, I think we do lack the per­son­nel. But I do think coach­ing has played a big part. I mean, even last year, we did win six games, but it was­n’t because of our offense. And espe­cial­ly it was­n’t because of our cre­ativ­i­ty in the past, our run game led every­thing. And I think that real­ly comes down to how good your run­ning backs and how good your line can hold up. I think our offense espe­cial­ly in the past game is lack­ing a lot of cre­ativ­i­ty. And it’s just some­thing I mean, at this point your own for I feel like it’s some­thing needs to get changed. I feel like some sort of cre­ativ­i­ty needs to be involved. It’s been very stale, very bor­ing. And I think Charl­ton is def­i­nite­ly on the hot seat right now because of that.

Evan 5:57
What are the chances of this first win com­ing on Sat­ur­day againts an Aggies team that real­ly fought with JMU. Obvi­ous­ly, they start­ed off pret­ty slow in the first half, but they real­ly weren’t com­pet­i­tive in that sec­ond half. I mean, they’ve shown the abil­i­ty to 100% com­pete and be com­pet­i­tive in these types of games even on the road.

John 6:15
I’m not so sure what the game is going to end up look­ing like but I mean any col­lege foot­ball there’s always a chance for these teams to win but UConn real­ly needs to come out fight and strong and I know you touched on it before Evan but the whole the Jack­son Mitchell tar­get­ing inci­dent that’s real­ly some­thing that this defense espe­cial­ly can use to kind of fuel them­selves in this game. They real­ly need a spark and that’s that’s a sit­u­a­tion I mean, you have ACC peo­ple mak­ing calls down dur­ing the game telling you to review plays more you have a play­er removed from the game because of it I mean that’s some­thing that’s gonna get you fired up and I real­ly hope they bring that ener­gy to the game.

Kaleb 6:47
Yeah, I mean, I think like like you said, every it’s col­lege foot­ball every­one has a fight­ing chance 100% As of right now I would­n’t say we’re def­i­nite­ly not the favorite and I def­i­nite­ly say it’s look­ing it looks slim for a win I think we need to again pull pull up some more offen­sive con­sis­ten­cy pull out some more cre­ative plays, do some­thing dif­fer­ent that these guys haven’t seen before. Last year we did play them very close. But we’re also miss­ing some key play­ers like that and our our run game was effi­cient last year in that first game we played them and we haven’t seen that much this year. And I think it’s going to take some spark like that because Utah State has shown they can put up points they put up sev­en do a cou­ple weeks ago. And I we haven’t seen that from this Uconn team. So that’s some­thing that is def­i­nite­ly gonna be needed.

Evan 7:33
All right, we’ve got a super spe­cial guest on the pod­cast today. He’s cov­ered the 2021 UConn Wom­en’s Nation­al Cham­pi­onship appear­ance. He’s cur­rent­ly the sports edi­tor of Ucon­n’s pre­mier stu­dent news­pa­per, The Dai­ly Cam­pus, it’s my very good friend Strat­ton Stave. Strat­ton, Thanks so much for com­ing on the show, man. Hap­py to have you.

Strat­ton 7:50
Yeah. Thanks for hav­ing me on. It’s great to be here.

Evan 7:53
Yeah, so this is def­i­nite­ly an anoth­er excit­ing sea­son for wom­en’s bas­ket­ball in Storrs. You’ve got a healthy Paige. There’s the return of like Nika, Alliyah, and even got a healthy Ice Brady, but what are some of the X fac­tors on this ros­ter in 2023?

Speak­er 4 8:07
Yeah, I mean, you think about I mean, it has to be Paige to start. I mean, as you men­tioned, I mean, she’s should be ful­ly healthy on paper. I mean, you nev­er know how peo­ple just com­ing back from injuries and stuff. But I mean, that’s it all starts and ends of the page. And I mean, you look, Alliyah Edwards return­ing all Amer­i­can she did a lot with­out a lot of help last year. I mean, you lose Lou Lopez-Senechal, but giv­en the tal­ent that you have com­ing back, I mean, that’s not the end of the world.And Azzi Fudd, some­one that was­n’t men­tioned she played first six games last year, at an All Amer­i­can lev­el. A lot of peo­ple for­get about that. I mean, she pret­ty much sin­gle hand­ed­ly beat Iowa who went on to have a pret­ty good run there and the tour­na­ment cou­ple good new­com­ers com­ing in to KK Arnold, named to watch could have some trou­ble get­ting on the floor with the amount of depth in the back­court. But she will help with the min­utes that she puts in

John 8:57
Strat­ton back on the top­ic of Paige, it’s pret­ty clear that she’s essen­tial to the suc­cess of this ros­ter. As some­one who’s seen her at her peak. What are some of your expec­ta­tions at her for this season?

Strat­ton 9:05
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that she’s going to have to car­ry the team in the way that she did her first sea­son and then when she came back, but I mean, with a team that’s now sort of used to play­ing with­out her and not hav­ing to real­ly rely on her to get points, I think that she can dri­ve the offense. Look to be a lit­tle less ball dom­i­nant with Nika Muhl there to sort of give her some nice pass­es, spread the ball, and then be more of a sec­ondary ball han­dler. Mean­while, she is great when she’s able to make her team­mates bet­ter. It’s also I mean, she’s a world class scor­er. So I think that that’s going to help her a lot.

Kaleb 9:42
And last­ly, I mean, the com­pe­ti­tion in wom­en’s col­lege bas­ket­ball has been ramp­ing up espe­cial­ly over the last year. With teams in a non con­fer­ence sched­ule like Mary­land and UCLA. What do you think a game that’s been cir­cled on their sched­ule going into this year?

Strat­ton 9:54
Yeah, I mean, even though you lose Aliyah Boston, it has to be South Car­oli­na, or I think that it’s in South Car­oli­na, in Feb­ru­ary, but ever since Paige Beck­er’s clutch over­time shot in South Car­oli­na back in her fresh­man year, South Car­oli­na has won like I think three straight. So that is a game that every­one’s gonna have cir­cled on their cal­en­dar. Ucon­n’s gonna be real­ly lick­ing their chops at a vul­ner­a­ble South Car­oli­na team los­ing a fair bit.

Evan 10:17
Alright, just a small pre­view of the UConn wom­en’s bas­ket­ball sea­son from The Dai­ly Cam­pus sports edi­tor Strat­ton Stave, thanks for com­ing on again.

Strat­ton 10:24
Yeah, thanks for hav­ing me. It’s great. Appre­ci­ate it.

Evan 10:29
And that’s a wrap on all things UConn sports. I’m Evan. I’m Caleb. I’m John, and we’ll catch you next week for some of the biggest sports sto­ry­lines in stores.