[Rosiak's Blog] Live from Connecticut

[ToddRosiakSays]

Live from Connecticut


First off, Dominic James is still being classified as day-to-day with his sprained right wrist.

Next, some big non-basketball news as far as the family of coach Tom Crean is concerned: his brother-in-law, John Harbaugh, was hired as head coach of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens.

"It's been a lot of fun to watch him go through this," said Crean. "It's been a lot of fun to talk to him, and I know the entire family feels the same way. Nobody is more deserving of the opportunity to do what he's going to do, and I think he's going to be incredibly successful."

That makes for four current or former head coaches in the Crean/Harbaugh clan: Crean at MU, John Harbaugh at Baltimore, Jim Harbaugh at Stanford and Jack Harbaugh, father of John, Jim and Crean's wife, Joani, formerly at Western Kentucky.

"We always talk sports and situations and leadership," Crean said. "Certainly everybody relies on Jack for guidance. In getting to know Mike McCarthy over the last year and a half - I've obviously known John longer - there's a lot of similarities. A real toughness, a presence about them. Incredibly organized. It doesn't matter what position you have, whether you're the star quarterback, the star linebacker or the third video guy - they're going to make you feel like your role is incredibly important.

"I think when you have that you've got people that have great self-confidence, and I think that's why John will be successful. That's a big reason why Mike is so successful."

As far as the Connecticut Huskies go, they're 11-5 overall and 2-3 in the Big East. They've lost two of their last three, including a 72-69 matchup with Providence on Thursday.

Forward Jeff Adrien leads UConn in scoring at 14.5 points per game, with guards Jerome Dyson and A.J. Price following at 14.3 and 13.9, respectively. Adrien is also tied for fourth in rebounding at 9.4 and 7-foot-3 Hasheem Thabeet 15th at 7.6.

Price leads the Big East in assists at 6.2, and Thabeet leads in blocked shots at 4.0.

"Extremely fast, play very good defensively because of what they can do up front," said Crean. "Lead the nation in blocked shots, in the top five in the nation in field-goal percentage defense. We're going to have to take good shots. And obviously we're going to have to shoot it much better than we did against Louisville. We didn't do a very good job Thursday night of getting in the line of vision of the passer. We might have been open, but we didn't take that one extra step to make sure that the receiver or the passer saw us. Hence, that might have a little to do with the assists.

"We just didn't make shots. We've got to be able to do that against this team, but at the same time it doesn't matter how many shots you make or don't make. If you don't rebound the ball better than we have done, we're not going to be successful. So that has got to be a huge part of everything that we do as we prepare for Sunday."

Price, sidelined for his first two years at UConn because of illness and legal problems, had an up-and-down 2006-'07 but appears to have rebounded nicely this season.

"In my opinion, just watching him from afar, I think he's playing the way they had envisioned the whole time," said Crean. "That's the guy I saw a couple of summers ago in the Nike Camp in the counselor's games. I think he's outstanding. He's averaging 16 points, seven assists and six rebounds over the last four games. That's impressive stuff.

"Jerome Dyson is a whirlwind; he can make things happen on both ends of the floor and from long range, he's tremendous at getting to the rim, and their front line is strong. There's so many things there that we have to be prepared for. And they're not playing a lot of guys. I think they have six guys right now that are playing 20 minutes or more, and four of those guys are playing over 30-some minutes a game.

"It's a very similar team to what we saw last year, but they're older, more experienced and coming off a tough game, just like we are."

Crean also said the Huskies are playing more zone than they did last year. It was an alignment Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun didn't show against MU in the Golden Eagles' victory at Gampel Pavilion last season, but considering the struggles they've had against it this year, that's likely to change.

"Quite a bit against Georgetown," Crean said. "They'r emixing their defenses more. I think it's part of what (Calhoun) does, so you have to prepare for it. Again, it's not the recognition of what defense they're in; it's the recognition of how to attack and find the open man. There's been times this year, regardless of if it's man or zone, that we've become stagnant. If we do that, that will play to what their No. 1 strength is defensively, which is their length."

http://blogs.jsonline.com/muhoops/archive/2008/01/19/live-from-connecticut.aspx