Reign in the Forecast: Previewing the 2023–24 UConn Men’s Basketball Season

 

Reign in the Forecast

Com­ing off of a his­toric run to becom­ing col­lege bas­ket­ball cham­pi­ons, the UConn Men’s Bas­ket­ball team will look to sus­tain their suc­cess in the upcom­ing sea­son. Jen Ryu, Glenn Cul­ly, Zachary Arzano, and Ben Hea­cox take a look at what’s upcom­ing in what is a high­ly antic­i­pat­ed sea­son. Tune in for a look back at last year’s per­for­mance, the rep­u­ta­tion of Husky fans, a break­down of the cur­rent ros­ter, and a pre­view of this year’s schedule.

 

Transcript

Intro music

Jen: Wel­come to Reign in the Fore­cast where we dis­cuss all things UConn men’s bas­ket­ball. Dat­ing back to 1999, no oth­er divi­sion 1 men’s bas­ket­ball pro­gram has won more nation­al cham­pi­onships than the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut who won its fifth nation­al cham­pi­onship in April. That’s more than Duke, North Car­oli­na, Ken­tucky and Kansas and has unar­guably pro­pelled them into blue blood status.

Zach: Head Coach Dan Hur­ley warned you in Jan­u­ary 2020 after a tough loss to Vil­lano­va. But did any­body lis­ten? No. Now the Huskies are back like they nev­er left. Equipped with a top five recruit­ing class com­ing into Storrs, the Huskies are ready to defend their title. Let’s review the last sea­son in all of its glo­ry and also take a look into next sea­son and see what’s upcom­ing for the Huskies. So when you’re talk­ing about last sea­son’s suc­cess, you have to men­tion and you have to start at Adama Sang. He was our lead­ing scor­er and took a huge leap since his fresh­man year here. Not only did he lead Con­necti­cut in scor­ing with 17.2 point per game, he was the Most Out­stand­ing Play­er in the NCAA tour­na­ment in our run to the cham­pi­onship. Anoth­er huge key to our suc­cess was Jor­dan Hawkins. Jor­dan Hawkins, our sec­ond lead­ing scor­er, he was select­ed in the first round of this year’s NBA drat to the New Orleans Pel­i­cans. Despite aver­ag­ing one less point per game than Sanogo with 16.2, a lot of his shots came from dis­tance and were able to cre­ate a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties down low for Sanogo. At his vol­ume he was arguably the best three point shoot­er in the country.

Glenn: He was the best three point shoot­er in the coun­try. No debate, just for what it’s worth.

Zach: And if I were to put one more big three to the suc­cess and peo­ple that we had leave it’d be Andre Jack­son.  I mean when you define a Swiss Army knife when you talk about a jack of all trades it’s him. You know sev­en points per game might not jump off the page but his abil­i­ty to play are defend real­ly one through five and run the fast break opened up so many oppor­tu­ni­ties for this team.

Jen: So let’s talk about the fan­base because that was all the craze last year. So, the UConn Husky fan­base has claimed the top spot in the nation for sports fans accord­ing to an arti­cle by NBC Con­necti­cut. The Uni­ver­si­ty host­ed a watch par­ty in Gam­pel Pavil­ion for the nation­al cham­pi­onship so stu­dents could watch a lot of what’s going on in Houston.

Zach: Well, I’d say if you were on cam­pus 99% of the time every­one is walk­ing past you with their head down like they want noth­ing to do with you so I’d say that’s one of the only times that all of UConn was brought together.

Jen: So yeah, the UConn Huskies are known to be one of the best sports fans in the nation, every sin­gle game the stu­dent sec­tion is packed. I think for bas­ket­ball there’s like a game tra­di­tion where the march­ing band comes out and do their lit­tle dancey dance and then they have the news­pa­per entrance when the oppos­ing team comes out so the UConn fan­base is def­i­nite­ly going very strong and we are look­ing for anoth­er great year for the Huskies.

Glenn: So look­ing ahead to the upcom­ing sea­son for the Huskies we’re going to do a quick break­down of what the line­up is going to look like before we start to look ahead to the sched­ule. In terms of what the ros­ter con­struc­tion is going to look like this year our start­ing five is going to be Stephon Cas­tle, he’s our num­ber one recruit this year, dog at point guard. Tris­ten New­ton’s going to be run­ning the two this year at shoot­ing guard. At the wings we’re gonna have Alex Kar­ban. He’s a return­ing play­er, he was a mas­sive part of the team from last year, start­ed in pret­ty much every game. I’ve seen him around cam­pus, he’s added some mus­cle to that frame so excit­ed about him. We got Cam Spencer on the wing as well, he’s a trans­fer from Rut­gers, we’ll get into what he did there in a sec­ond. Last­ly we got Dono­van Clin­ton run­ning the five. Off the bench we got Solomon Ball spark plug sixth man, Hasan Diar­ra return­ing point guard off the bench, dog, defen­sive men­ace, dis­rup­tor, the likes. Last­ly, Sam­son John­son for some big man depth. Tak­ing a deep­er look into some of the return­ers this year and what their roles will look like, Tris­ten New­ton, he’s a for­mer trans­fer from East Car­oli­na.  He was real­ly sol­id for us last year. Has two triple dou­bles which was a UConn sin­gle sea­son record. Com­bo guard, can play the one or the two, plays well on both ends. Mov­ing on to Dono­van Clin­gan. He will need to be the best play­er on this team for us to be as good as we want to be this year. He did not have a mas­sive role although he was still a sig­nif­i­cant impact. He was prob­a­bly only get­ting thir­teen min­utes game or so because he was behind Adama Sanogo. Now he’s gonna be thrust into that Sang role, he’s gonna get a ton more min­utes and take a ton more shots so he’s gonna need to be the leader on this team. Anoth­er guy that needs to step up is Alex Kara­jan. I already men­tioned he looks stronger he’s gonna be a leader this year. Already talked a lit­tle about Has­san Diar­ra. He’s anoth­er return­er, for­mer trans­fer from Texas A&M. Dog off the bench. He’s a defen­sive men­ace and he’s gonna make the oppos­ing team’s point guard hate his life. Last­ly for return­ers play­ing sig­nif­i­cant roles we have Sam­son John­son. He’s a huge piece this year, he’s gonna be our main source of big man depth. Mov­ing onto some of the new­com­ers this year, I men­tioned we have Cam Spencer, a trans­fer from Rut­gers. Put up thir­teen a game last year on 43% from three which is crazy crazy good, he’s gonna be huge fac­tor in mak­ing up for the three point shoot­ing were los­ing in Jor­dan Hawkins. Stephon Cas­tle, as I men­tioned before he is our num­ber one recruit, twelfth on ESP­N’s top 100, five star, great facil­i­ta­tor, phe­nom­e­nal build. Mov­ing on to Solo Ball,  he is prob­a­bly our sec­ond high­est recruit com­ing into this sea­son. He was 33rd on ESP­N’s top 100, four star, explo­sive guard, crazy ath­let­ic, he’s gonna be huge for us off the bench, he’s gonna have to fill the role of a Joey Cal­cater­ra spark plug that we need some­times when the offense is stag­nant. Last­ly we have Youss­eff Sin­gare, he is our big man prospect, but he is still a project at this time and prob­a­bly won’t see much mean­ing­ful min­utes this year.

Ben: Stephon Cas­tle I’ve heard is a walk­ing buck­et. While he was in high school down in Geor­gia, I believe, they played Dun­canville, a high school down in Texas, they’re just a pow­er­house ath­let­i­cal­ly, he dropped 41, so that’s a good sign and hope­ful­ly he can bring that scor­ing prowess to Storrs. It’s a very top heavy non con­fer­ence slate so if Uconn wants to be the best they’ll have to beat the best. That starts with Indi­ana in the Empire Clas­sic, but they do have a trans­fer in Kel’el Ware from Ore­gon who is a big time recruit. And then they’ll play the win­ner of the Louisville Texas matchup who’s also apart of the Empire Clas­sic. That’s where things can get a lit­tle bit tough for UConn. The Long­horns got a huge trans­fer in Max Abmas, who was one of the best scor­ing guards in the coun­try for Oral Roberts. Per­haps the biggest non-con­fer­ence matchup to start the sea­son — it’s the big one — Kansas, Allen Field­house. Past two nation­al cham­pi­ons going head to head. That’s going to be a mea­sur­ing stick game to see if we belong in the upper ech­e­lon of col­lege bas­ket­ball, which I think we do. Four days lat­er, they’re gonna trav­el to New York City and take part in the Jim­my V clas­sic against North Car­oli­na, anoth­er blue blood. And then, it’s a rematch of the Elite Eight game where we take on Gon­za­ga in Seat­tle. Mark Few did lose a lot last year in Drew Timme, but he did add a lot of sol­id trans­fers because that’s what he does because he’s Mark Few. So that’s gonna be a tough one. Final­ly, that clos­es out the non-con­fer­ence play. We start con­fer­ence play against Seton Hall. But, a cou­ple days lat­er it’s Rick Pepino and St. John’s with their boat­load of trans­fers. Then Xavier, who gave us trou­ble last year, fol­lowed by Marquette.

Jen: Just want­ed to say that most of the stats and ros­ter and sched­ule is pro­vid­ed by the UConn Huskies web­site in the Men’s Bas­ket­ball sec­tion. My hot take is that I know you nev­er win two years in a row but that maybe the wom­en’s and men’s will win March Mad­ness together.

Ben: It hap­pens every ten years. Men and women.

Jen: Yeah. It hap­pened 2014 right?

Ben: Yup, 2004, 2014, 2024.

Jen: Alright well that was the episode for today.

Glenn: Thank you for listening.

Out­ro Music

 

Related Links

https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/connecticut/men/2023.html

https://uconnhuskies.com/sports/mens-basketball/schedule/2023–24

https://uconnhuskies.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster