No. 6 UConn loses for a second time in four games with the NCAA Tournament up next

NEW YORK (AP) — By the time Dan Hurley got called for a technical foul a little over seven minutes in, UConn had already given the ball away three times and committed another turnover by failing to get it inbounds.

The situation only devolved from there, on the way to getting beat 72-52 by fellow Big East powerhouse St. John’s in the conference tournament title game. The sixth-ranked Huskies go into the NCAA Tournament having lost two of their past four games and displayed cracks throughout the season that threaten to prevent another long March Madness run for a program that expects it.

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“This team has definitely showed a level of fragility that some of our best teams haven’t,” Hurley said, unsure if he felt it was a soft performance or just a bad one. “We’ve been a team that has been very charitable to a lot of teams we play with live ball turnovers that lead to runouts. So, if we can’t take care of the ball and we can’t make shots, then obviously we’ve got problems. But I think they’re fixable things.”

One potential problem is an apparent left ankle injury to starting point guard Silas Demary Jr., who was carried off the floor after going down when he stopped on one of Zuby Ejiofor’s feet in the final minutes. Demary was initially injured midway through the second half and returned, but before the clock ran out, his parents were called down from the stands to check on him and he did not come back again.

Hurley said the first thing he had heard was Demary had a “very mild sprain with no swelling” and expects a precautionary X-ray to be taken.

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed,” Hurley said. “Hopefully it’s not something that lingers.”

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UConn will play Thursday or Friday in the opening round of the tournament. Had Hurley’s team not lost at Marquette on March 7 in the regular season finale in what he called a “choke job” and then been on the receiving end of a 20-point drubbing against St. John’s, a No. 1 seed…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/no-6-uconn-loses-second-021756490.html

Author : STEPHEN WHYNO

Publish date : 2026-03-15 02:17:00

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