No. 5 UConn men’s basketball takes down DePaul, 72-54

Despite a sloppy start, UConn men’s basketball moved to 2-0 in the Big East with a convincing road win over DePaul in Chicago. While the Huskies (12-1, 2-0 Big East) looked out of sorts in the first half without star guard Solo Ball, they snapped out of it just in time to cruise to a comfortable 72-54 win.

Ball was surprisingly listed as inactive, ruled out with a wrist injury suffered after a hard fall in the conference opener against Butler on Tuesday. With Ball out, Jaylin Stewart returned to the starting lineup.

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The Huskies were entirely out of sorts early on, turning it over six times in the first eight minutes alone, leading to 12 DePaul points.

The home team led for most of the start of the first half, up by as much as eight with 10:54 to play after Layden Blocker capped off a 7-0 run with a layup to lead 15-7. But Silas Demary Jr. and Alex Karaban did everything in their power to keep things from getting too out of hand. Demary Jr. helped UConn punch back, scoring five-straight points as part of a 9-0 run to give the Huskies their first lead of the night.

UConn would take the lead for good off a nifty reverse layup from Jaylin Stewart with 6:17 left to play, and Karaban and Demary helped stretch the lead to as much as five in the first half, combining for a 5-0 run in the final minutes before a Blocker buzzer beater cut the halftime lead to three.

Karaban was a much-needed stabilizing force throughout the entire first 20 minutes, scoring 10 points on a perfect 6-6 shooting from the field. He scored five of UConn’s first seven points as the offense sputtered out of the gate, and stretched the floor effectively with two 3-pointers. Demary Jr. started out on pace for a shot at another triple-double with seven points, five assists, and six boards in just the first half alone.

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Despite only really being able to lean on those two and coughing up the ball 13 times for 16 Blue Demons points, UConn managed to lead 33-30 at the break after arguably…

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Publish date : 2025-12-22 00:40:00

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