Chatting Huskies , Episode 1: A discussion on the current state of the UConn men’s basketball program.

Join host Dylan Richards as he chats with three guests, Niko­las Dziedz­ic, Kali Reed, and Alec Beane about the cur­rent mishaps of the UConn men’s bas­ket­ball team, and what their future holds.

Tran­scrip­tion:

Dylan Richards: All right, my name is Dylan Richards, and this is Chat­ting Huskies. This is gonna be a pod­cast about Uconn sports and a lit­tle con­text. I know noth­ing about our col­lege’s sports, but I have three experts here with me that know every­thing about our col­lege sports. So, here they will intro­duces themselves.

Kali Reed: Okay. I’m Kali Reed. I’m a play by play com­men­ta­tor for WHUS Radio. I fol­lowed the wom­en’s bas­ket­ball team close­ly this sea­son. I most­ly do wom­en’s games, and I’m set to go to the wom­en’s final four and SW16 elite eight rounds to do play by play com­men­tary if they make it. So that’s my background.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: I’m Niko­las Dziedz­ic, I’m a cre­ative con­tent intern for the foot­ball team and I’ve worked a lit­tle bit around the bas­ket­ball team. I’m not set to go to the Final Four, but I’m hap­py for Kali

Alec Bean: I’m Alec Bean. I’m a reporter with UCTV on cam­pus. Last year I went to the Final Four for the men’s and saw them win the nation­al cham­pi­onship. I’ve cov­ered more wom­en’s bas­ket­ball this sea­son, but I’m very informed on both teams at bas­ket­ball especially.

Dylan Richards: All right, so I obvi­ous­ly know the news around the team. I’ve seen all the rum­blings on the Yik Yak, all the posts com­ing after the games. So my ques­tion is, are we washed? Because the team that has won two nation­al cham­pi­onships in row is going 18 and nine this sea­son. So I’ll give this off to

Alec Bean: So for starters, I mean, you’re los­ing a top big man in the coun­try in Dono­van Clin­gan to the draft, and obvi­ous­ly he was a big key piece in that run and those, both the runs the past two years. Although we did have Adama Sanogo two years ago, Dono­van was a big impact. And hav­ing a guy like Sam­son who did­n’t get many reps last year, and the year before that is kind of, it’s a big hole to fill.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Also when you lose your best guards and your for­wards, and then you have some­one like Alex Cara­ban who’s real­ly incon­sis­tent. He can go from drop­ping three points in 27 min­utes to drop in 20 points in 36 min­utes. It’s real­ly hard to get a flow going with your team.

Alec Bean: Hav­ing a cen­ter who aver­ages three rebounds a game isn’t real­ly going to do you any good, in terms of obvi­ous­ly win­ning games and things like that. Which is why I per­son­al­ly believe that, the back­up Cen­ter Tar­ris Reed Jr. Should be get­ting more min­utes. He’s aver­ag­ing sev­en rebounds a game which is much more effi­cient, obvi­ous­ly, for the cen­ter posi­tion. And like Niko­las said, los­ing your top guards like Tris­tan New­ton and Cam Spencer to the league and Stephon Cas­tle, the team last year was just so tal­ent­ed, and it’s def­i­nite­ly some tough voids to fill.

Kali Reed: I def­i­nite­ly think it was a hard tran­si­tion and a tran­si­tion that they antic­i­pat­ed. The team antic­i­pat­ed to be kind of eas­i­er bring­ing in these new guys like Liam McNee­ley, Aidan Mahaney, Tar­ris Reed Jr. They antic­i­pat­ed the tran­si­tion to go a lot smoother, and it has­n’t been. It’s been a rocky road for them so far this season.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Yeah. And just watch­ing from an out­side per­spec­tive, because like I said, I’m not as in depth on the team as you guys, but I’ve just noticed that with the team and how incon­sis­tent they are, it just seems like they haven’t built the chem­istry that they used to have, because uconns had some real­ly big games this sea­son where it real­ly makes you think we’re back and it’s go time. And then right after that, they lose an eas­i­er game. So just hav­ing such an incon­sis­tent line­up makes it real­ly hard to try to dri­ve towards anoth­er championship.

Alec Bean: Yeah. And I mean, espe­cial­ly going off Kali’s point with Laim McNee­ley I mean, he’s real­ly been the only light of the sea­son. Sav­ing grace. Yeah, I mean, the fresh­man, he’s in talks for fresh­man of the year. I mean, he’s won big’fresh­man of the Week count­less times and he’s aver­ag­ing 15 points and 7 rebounds. I mean, the kid’s been just a super­star and he’s prob­a­bly leav­ing after this year, so that’s not real­ly gonna be suf­fi­cient, for the team. I know they have some key pieces in, like, recruit­ing wise, but los­ing a guy like Liam McNee­ley’s gonna be pret­ty tough for the team.

Kali Reed: He was out the major­i­ty of Jan­u­ary, so how did the team do when he was out?

Alec Bean: I mean, the team itself, like, it did­n’t do. You know, it was­n’t too bad, but obvi­ous­ly it was­n’t too great. They def­i­nite­ly felt him not being there. I mean, they were los­ing to DePaul, but I think it was like 14 at half time. They only beat Prov­i­dence by three. Lost to Vil­lano­va, bare­ly escaped George­town, lost to Creighton at home. A lot of games that they should have won by more. They bare­ly escaped with. But then you feel his impact imme­di­ate­ly when he comes back and we Play crate and drops 38 points and 10 rebounds. I mean a guy like Liam McNee­ley is real­ly the only rea­son why this team some­how does­n’t have dou­ble dig­it loss­es yet.

Dylan Richards: Which also speak­ing of our team, is our team most­ly young and under­played peo­ple com­ing out of last year because we lost a lot of our peo­ple to the draft and I don’t know, like trades and everything?

Alec Bean: Yeah, I mean espe­cial­ly this year the team is extreme­ly young. With cov­er­ing the men’s team, I’m able to sit in on the press con­fer­ences and stuff like that. Hur­ley’s talked a lot about how, ah, head coach Dan Hur­ley’s talked a lot about how Liam has a lot more pres­sure on him this year than a guy likes Stephon Cas­tle did last year. that team was filled with tal­ent from top of the ros­ter to bot­tom. They had guys that could play all 40 min­utes if they had to. This year’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. McNee­ley’s got more pres­sure on him and just not hav­ing as much March Mad­ness expe­ri­ence on the ros­ter. Def­i­nite­ly hurts the team com­pared to last year. So, los­ing guys like, you know, like Tris­tan New­ton who was a starter in both runs, Dono­van Clin­gan obvi­ous­ly, Cara­ban just los­ing guys like Cara­ban obvi­ous­ly on the team, but los­ing guys that were played such key pieces, in March Mad­ness def­i­nite­ly hurts the team.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Yeah. So actu­al­ly a new point to bring up with coach Dan Hur­ley. I’ve seen a lot online of peo­ple just kind of turn­ing on him for the way that his coach­ing style is because obvi­ous­ly with the back topack nation­al cham­pi­onships, he got an offer to be the coach for the Los Ange­les Lak­ers and he declined it to return to UConn. And at that point he was offered a lot of mon­ey. The Lak­ers fans real­ly want­ed him to come over. A lot of fans out­side of UConn want­ed him to leave. But I feel like now as the sea­son’s gone deep­er and we’ve start­ed to be a lit­tle bit worse, peo­ple have kind of flipped a script on him and they don’t think that he’s as great of a coach as they thought he was. So I was just won­der­ing if you could bring up a point about that.

Alec Bean: Yeah, I mean Dan Hur­ley is. He was the coach of the year last year. Obvi­ous­ly know you get NBA looks to become a head coach. It’s def­i­nite­ly a priv­i­lege and an hon­or for a coach to get there. Per­son­al­ly I don’t think it’s entire­ly his fault. We’re run­ning all the same Sets we’ve been run­ning the past few years in terms of plays and things of that nature. We’re just not hit­ting our shots really.I mean, yeah, it’s hard to win games if your play­ers can’t exe­cute as well as they have in the past. 

Dylan Richards: Per­son­al­ly I don’t think it’s Hur­ley’s fault that the team is doing bad. The team’s going through a cold patch right now. We just lost all of our star play­ers as we said pre­vi­ous­ly. And that Lak­ers offered too. We could say it went to his head or what­ev­er. But at the same time, any coach that los­es all of his star play­ers left with who­ev­er’s left­’­go­ing to have to claw and bite for Weber’s left to try to claim what they had before speak­ing at the play­ers. Look­ing at the stat line up right now, Sam­son John­son, his points and­his rebounds aren’t on par with every­one else on the team. So I was kind of won­der­ing, like, are the play­ers them­selves also con­tribut­ing to what’s hap­pen­ing or is it just the team in gen­er­al that’s been doing bad?

Alec Bean: I mean, yeah, los­ing a lot of play­ers to the draft, los­ing an All Amer­i­can, Tris­tan New­ton at the guard posi­tion, los­ing Stephon Cas­tle was one of the best. Who was one of the best fresh­men, if not the best fresh­men in the coun­try last year. I think. The real loss year though is los­ing Dono­van Clin­gan As I had men­tioned ear­li­er, Sam­son John­son, he’s only aver­ag­ing three rebounds on the sea­son this year. And I under­stand that it’s pret­ty big shoes to fill. But you know, you play behind two phe­nom­e­nal cen­ters. You know, all four years you’ve been in col­lege with the Adama Sanogo and Dono­van Clin­gan, you know, you’re expect­ed a lit­tle more out of your­self. Espe­cial­ly Hur­ley prob­a­bly expects a lot out of Sam­son. So I mean, I guess my ques­tion for Niko­las goes to, Is why are they still start­ing Sams­son John­son over a guy like Tar­ris Reed

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Jr. Well, it’s inter­est­ing when you look at it from a sta­tis­tics per­spec­tive because we don’t know what goes on in the lock­er room. We don’t know the chem­istry between the team. But if you pure­ly just look at sta­tis­tics and you take this last loss to St. John’s, for exam­ple, they each played 20 min­utes with Sam­son John­son putting up eight points, two blocks, two rebounds and an assist and then ter­rists re on the same 20 min­utes, 15 points, 2 blocks, 6 rebounds. It’s inter­est­ing to think that you have a cen­ter that will out­per­form the rest of the lock­er room and still comes off the bench in crit­i­cal time and gets a lot less min­utes. And even in their oth­er St. John’s game, they actu­al­ly did kind of play this where they put Sam­son John­son only eight min­utes. I don’t know if he was on m minute restric­tion or not, but he only played eight min­utes. And they let Tar­ris Reed play 32. And once again, he had 12 points, 15 rebounds. And we weren’t doing very well defen­sive­ly, but at least we had our cen­ter that was there to get the rebounds in. And that’s real­ly impor­tant when you are play­ing against these real­ly strong teams. So to start a cen­ter that’s aver­ag­ing three rebounds is just a lit­tle inter­est­ing. And it makes you think what goes on in the lock­er room.

Dylan Richards: So I’ve also noticed the stu­dent involve­ment with the team has been way less than the past cou­ple of years. With lack of bet­ter terms, we’re not glaz­ing our peo­ple on our team that much. I’ve known peo­ple say they will feed their first born into Dono­van Clin­gon so we can win anoth­er nation­al cham­pi­onship. I’m not notic­ing that all. So is there any dif­fer­ence in the morale of the stu­dents and also the peo­ple on the team that’s caus­ing this divide from stu­dent to ath­lete year?

Kali Reed: I just think it’s peo­ple start­ing to real­ize, like, they’re not as inter­ac­tive with the fans. And I inter­viewed a cou­ple of the play­ers. Has­san Diar­ra , Alex Kara­ban, I don’t remem­ber who else. Sam­son John­son at Big East media day. And they were just not hap­py to talk to media. They were just in bad moods. It seemed like they had no inter­est in talk­ing to any­body. It was just those atti­tudes that I think a lot of stu­dents are notic­ing. And I’ve heard a cou­ple things about some of the play­ers yelling at staff and yelling at oth­er stu­dents who just work here. And so I think that’s a big part of why stu­dents aren’t as con­nect­ed. Because when you look at the wom­en’s side, or even if you look at oth­er col­lege play­ers like Jared McCain, who played for Duke last year, he’s inter­ac­tive with the fans in per­son and on social media. He has a big social media pres­ence because hes just him­self on social media. And a lot of the stu­dents on the UConn bas­ket­ball team on the men’s side, they’re not as interactive.

Alec Bean: Yeah.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And I think even though UConn is one of the biggest bas­ket­ball schools in the world, and obvi­ous­ly we call our­selves a bas­ket­ball cap­i­tal, of the world. I still think a large major­i­ty of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion isn’t going to be a big bas­ket­ball fanat­ic. But being so good, every sin­gle stu­dent can find that con­nec­tion and real­ly enjoy watch­ing the bas­ket­ball and en join­ing the team because it’s real­ly easy to say that your team’s the best in the world. So I think with the team not per­form­ing as well, a large major­i­ty of the stu­dent base also does­n’t feel the dri­ve to fol­low them. And now you’re left with only the fanat­ic fans, the ones that real­ly care about the team. And for the play­ers too. That’s going to be hard because when you’re being dri­ven by your entire stu­dent body of 20 plus thou­sand peo­ple, it’s a lot eas­i­er to be con­fi­dent and know that you have some­thing to bring back. But then once it starts kind of dying down a lit­tle bit, it just gets in your head.

Alec Bean: Yeah. And I think anoth­er big piece with that whole stu­dent body thing is just the team chem­istry itself. Last year, It real­ly seemed like, you know, not say­ing that they don’t enjoy being around each oth­er obvi­ous­ly, becausee of course they do. Their team­mates, they prob­a­bly spend at least 40 hours a week with each oth­er. But last year you could real­ly see it on the court that their team chem­istry was through the roof. They looked like they were hav­ing fun play­ing bas­ket­ball. This year it does­n’t real­ly seem like they’re hav­ing as much fun as they were last year. Obvi­ous­ly, you know, win­ning helps with that. But you can only get two win­ning if you enjoy play­ing with each oth­er and cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for one anoth­er and real­ly, being suc­cess­ful on the court, that trans­lates to suc­cess. The chem­istry that they each would have with each other.

Dylan Richards: Which I also think what peo­ple for­get about our stu­dent ath­letes is the first part. They’re also stu­dents. Some of these peo­ple, even though we have our cllingans that go off the play in the NBA,this is the high­est lev­el that they’re go goingna be able to play. They’re in their prime. They’re try­ing to do the best for us. And even if they don’t come home with anoth­er nat­ty, they’re so try­ing to do that for us. So speak­ing of that, do you guys think that anoth­er nation­al cham­pi­onship for our men’s team is even pos­si­ble this year? Or is that com­plete­ly out of the pic­ture now?

Kali Reed: I mean, Dan Hur­ley has said that he did­n’t even know his team was good until March of last year. So I think there’s hope. I think, you know, we do have 18 wins still on the sea­son, we have lost to some big com­peti­tors like St. John’s, but I think if the morale is right with the team and Dan Hur­ley has a good half­time speech or March Mad­ness speech rather than. I think, I think it’s def­i­nite­ly possible.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Then just one point to kind of bring up, to wrap up how the team sea­sons and I feel like it’s just some­thing that prob­a­bly affect­ed the team is if we talked about the Maui Invi­ta­tion­al ear­ly on in the sea­son for our team to go to this tour­na­ment and not only lose three games against teams that we should not lose to, but also to have Dan Hur­ley come out and be aggres­sive with the media. Obvi­ous­ly angry because his team lost, but I mean he went out there and said, I’m nev­er doing back to back tour­na­ments again. I’m not doing this. Our team should­n’t do this. And it, it looks bad for the pub­lic. But also hav­ing your coach react like that after you just lost three games to unranke teams. I feel like that’s a real­ly bad way to set morale at the start of a sea­son because you still have your entire sea­son to go after this.

Alec Bean: Yeah, I mean, in terms of like 3P to Maui Invi­ta­tion­al, obvi­ous­ly the Maui Invi­ta­tion­al was a dis­as­ter for the men’s team. But like the point that Kali made with Dan Hur­ley under­side­lines, real­ly any­thing’s pos­si­ble in March Mad­ness. We saw it two years ago where I believe they were a five seed and they end­ed up win­ning it it all. It all depends, in my opin­ion, on matchups and who you’re gonna go up against in each round. I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly take it out of the equa­tion entire­ly, but those loss­es of the Maui Invi­ta­tion­al, like Niko­las said it def­i­nite­ly set a pres­i­dentced ear­li­er in the sea­son. With that being said, I mean it’s not ful­ly out of the cards, but it’s def­i­nite­ly gonna be dif­fi­cult to get there, espe­cial­ly with how the sea­son is going right now.