PHILADELPHIA — UConn men’s basketball is getting ready for an extra late tip-off on Friday night against 15-seeded Furman as they kick off their NCAA Tournament at 10 p.m. from Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.
The Paladins are the Southern Conference tournament champions and have won six of their last eight after a 16-10 start. They were the sixth seed going into their conference tournament, beating two of the top three teams in the league along the way.
“The SoCon is an underrated league,” Dan Hurley said in his pre-game press conference. “I was surprised to see [Furman] as a 15…Watching that league…a lot of good teams that kind of beat the heck out of each other… Not much difference between East Tennessee State, who won the league, and the seventh-place team in terms of record.”
While the Huskies are heavily favored by the oddsmakers and projected to win 78-59 by KenPom, Furman (22-12) heads into the Big Dance with a lot of confidence. They have a few reasons to believe that, as a team, they’re better than their record.
Their big man Cooper Bowser (14 PPG, 6 RPG) missed around 10 games earlier in the season, as did Asa Thomas (12.4 PPG); and they’ve been dependent on younger players, who have come along across the season.
“We started off really strong. We ran into some injuries mid-way through, and it took a while getting back adjusted. We started playing our best basketball in March, which is what you want to do,” Bowser said. “We got a nice streak going from the SoCon Tournament going out, so I think we're playing our best basketball now.”
Furman head coach Bob Richey is in his second NCAA Tournament in his ninth year leading the program. He shared that the team had a chance to practice at the Palestra the night before, the site of their 1974 NCAA Tournament win over South Carolina, the program’s first.
This year’s Paladins are led by a freshman from Massachusetts, Alex Wilkins, who’s averaging 17.7 PPG and 4.7 APG as their point guard. Fellow Mass. native Alex Karaban called Wilkins “fearless.”
Karaban continued: “As a freshman, he's fearless, and he's super confident out there…as a defense, [we’ve got to] really just make everything hard for him. But he's a really talented player, and we have respected him ever since we started watching film on them.”
Wilkins was not a highly heralded recruit. He prepped at Brooks School in North Andover, MA, where he earned NEPSAC Class B Player of the Year, and played for the Middlesex Magic AAU team in the Bay State.
“We're definitely playing our best basketball right now. It's exciting to see that,” Wilkins said on Thursday. “At full strength, [we’re] a championship-caliber team and excited to show the world what kind of team we are.”
For UConn, injuries are a concern heading in, alongside the fear of an upset. Silas Demary’s status is uncertain, with Hurley saying he was thinking questionable, but Demary Jr. telling the Hartford Courant that he’s going to play.
“The nerves will never go away,” Hurley shared. “You think, ‘Man, if I just win a championship, I'll never be nervous again.’ The pre-game jitters, night before a game where you don't sleep. None of that stuff dissipates by accomplishment. If anything, it creates an even higher standard in your mind of what you want to achieve…it definitely churns.”
Jaylin Stewart is also questionable, according to Hurley, for Friday or Sunday, said Hurley, who also shared that Malachi Smith is dealing with something and we may see some Alec Millender minutes.
In Thursday’s open practice at the arena, Demary Jr. and Stewart seemed to move without issue. Stewart wore a red sleeve on his right leg. He missed the entire Big East Tournament and the final three regular-season games, a stretch that has included two of the Huskies’ five losses.
“He's got a chance for tomorrow, and if not, if we're still playing on Sunday, he'll have a shot for that, but I'm not sure,” Hurley said.
The Huskies showed an appropriate level of respect for Wilkins, Bowser, and Furman’s playmaking ability.
“He's a long, athletic, five-man,” Tarris Reed Jr. said of Bowser, who he noted is shooting “77 percent on the year from two, so knowing that he's a left shoulder guy, right-handed post, has a good touch, touching the post, just be ultra physical…they're a dynamic team. They love to run.”
Hurley said that the Paladins’ offense reminds him of his own team.
“Coach [Richey] utilizes [Wilkins] really well offensively,” he explained. “In a lot of ways, it's like looking in the mirror offensively. We do a lot of the same thing. They use him the way we use Silas, the way we used Tristen Newton at the point guard position…You don't see as many freshmen as productive as he is or can score on all three levels like he can or is dangerous as a passer.”
Demary Jr. will likely be the one manning up Wilkins. But containing him and an offense like likes to move and take threes will, of course, be a team effort.
“He's a great player with the ball, but off the ball, he's just as dominant,” Solo Ball said. “We have to make sure we play the back cuts, make sure we don't let them cut us… just being locked in off the ball, and…making sure we blow up [Wilkins’] handoffs and just fixing his ball screens. That's the biggest thing going into this game.”
