How the universe sees Calhoun

Thanks to Rick for this image.

Lots of papers in Connecticut cover the Huskies. So, lots to run through.

First of all, the UConn players didn’t make excuses for what happened on the court. They showed class and admitted things.

The Huskies, who pride themselves on being physically and mentally tougher than anyone, met their match, losing 76-68. Gone is a 13-game winning streak and by next week so will their No. 1 ranking.

”It’s surprising,” senior Jeff Adrien said of Pitt’s physical superiority. “We haven’t seen anybody else do that this year. Pittsburgh is definitely one of the toughest teams in the country. I give them a lot of credit. They work hard. We do, too, but today they got the better of us.

”We have to move on. It’s going to be in my head, I know that.”
…
”I’m not in shock,” Price said. “I’m just disappointed. … We knew what type of game it was going to be. Whoever was tougher was going to win. We thought we were the tougher team, and I still think we’re the tougher team. They just out-toughed us tonight and beat us.”

Well, one player whined a bit.

“The coaches told me to play all out,” Thabeet said. “But it’s hard to play all out when every time you go out you get a foul call. I would go to the bench and get cold and then go back in the game. It was an adjustment for me.”

I guess he took the cue from his coach.

UConn coach Jim Calhoun made numerous intimations that the officiating was much of the reason why Thabeet was so ineffective. But the game didn’t appear to be any more physical than every other game against the Panthers.

There was one call that appeared to be bad, and it was an important one. Thabeet and Blair got tangled up as the Huskies moved down on offense, but official Mike Kitts emphatically called a fourth foul on Thabeet. The Huskies were in the midst of a run that gave them a brief lead and, realistically, they played better with Gavin Edwards on the floor and Thabeet on the bench.

Calhoun, in between making veiled references about the officials, seemed to understand that the Huskies needed more from Thabeet in such a physical game.

“One guy could have played better to help us win a basketball game,” Calhoun said.

Ah, yes the Calhoun post-game whinefest. I was more bemused than anything else when I watched it live.

“They played a particular style of basketball that we hadn’t seen this year,” said UConn coach Jim Calhoun, obviously referring to the physical nature of the play. “And it was very effective against us.” A.J. Price had a team-high 18 points and eight assists for UConn (24-2, 12-2 Big East) while Jeff Adrien and Kemba Walker had 13 points each. Sam Young scored 25 points for the Panthers (24-2, 11-2), who beat a No. 1 team for the first time in school history.

The way I took it was that it was typical Jim Calhoun. Knowing just how far he could go in complaining about the refs without actually taking a direct shot. So clearly trying to influence the way the next game gets called in a few weeks.

It was also typical Calhoun because he was calling out his players as well. He was saying, they didn’t respond to the challenge. They couldn’t match the play. And they didn’t.

The thing is, everyone else in the UConn media wasn’t buying his complaints about the physical play and the styles either.

If this had been UConn flexing its muscles and pulling off a nine-point victory on the road, we would be raving this morning that the Huskies had more guts than a slaughterhouse. So at the risk of Jim Calhoun calling my sports editor and suggesting I cover the Williams sisters and Rafael Nadal, there’s no way I’m straying far from doing anything but giving Pittsburgh, and especially Blair, major, major props.
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The mark of Calhoun’s teams over the years has been hard, physical, assertive play. The Huskies have had pretty players, but they do not pride themselves on pretty teams. That’s why it was a little uncomfortable hearing Calhoun tap-dance about the physicality of the game. Pittsburgh did to UConn what UConn has so often done to others.

To be fair, Calhoun gave credit to Levance Fields for hitting two big threes. He pointed out his team’s missed free throws. He criticized himself for his guard substitution after taking a five-point lead.

“Give Pittsburgh all the credit,” Calhoun said. “I’m not making excuses.”

Yet he spent so much of his postgame press conference repeating this was a much different style of game than had been allowed all season, that it sort of came off that way.

“Did I like it? Do I think it’s right? No,” he said. “I don’t think 26-27 games in you should be changing the way the … that’s it. I’m not commenting.

“If it’s going to be called that way, just let us know before. Back in the ’90s I saw this kind of game all the time. … If you didn’t see it you should probably be writing about tennis tonight.”

Sure, just the 90s. There might have well been snickering accompanying the articles.

Calhoun, dancing like a good boxer, kept qualifying every barb by saying “Pittsburgh won the game,” and “I’m not making excuses.”

Draw your own conclusions.

Let’s start with a few here:

Calhoun wasn’t wrong about a poorly officiated game. Kitts was overmatched. Why the Big East sent a B-level crew to an A-level game is a really good question that will never get answered. But for a guy whose team has been whistled for roughly 200 fewer fouls than the opponents this season – think about that for a second – his primary complaint should have been with his team.

The officials didn’t get outrebounded by 17.

They didn’t let Blair tap-dance on them under the basket.

Lest we forget this was a college basketball game, not 4 p.m. tea with the queen. This was The Game of the season, all the Carolina-Duke apologists notwithstanding. UConn-Pitt is supposed to have bumping, grabbing, collisions and the general sense that the weary and wimpy don’t belong.

It’s times like this that you get the idea Calhoun thinks he’s the only one who gets to decide how both teams are supposed to play. Pittsburgh’s plan was to play the way Pittsburgh usually plays. Free country, remember. A team that has Blair, an inside linebacker masquerading as a power forward, should play no other way than physical, really physical and then first-and-10, do it again.

”That’s what we do at Pitt,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said in answer to a question about why his team attacked Thabeet, given the way others have seen him roaming and approached the lane timidly. “We’re not going to change what we do in mid February.”

Dixon, for the record, didn’t think the physicality was any different Monday.

”It seemed like a typical game to us,” he said. “Big bodies playing hard on a national stage. I didn’t think (the physical play) was too much of a surprise to us … or them, I would think.”

You would think that. Even those who pretended that Calhoun was being vague.

There’s no bigger champion of tough, physical basketball than Calhoun, but he was as cryptic as could be in his postgame media remarks, despite repeatedly saying how obviously different the game was to him.

“It was just a different type of game than we played all year,” Calhoun said. “You saw what you saw. If you didn’t see it, then you shouldn’t be writing. I think in the ’90s, we played some games like that in the Big East. I know we did as a matter of fact.”

To the best of my recollection, no one relished them more than he.

“We have not played that type of game since early 2000s or back in the ’90s,” Calhoun said. “But that seemed to be what was going to be allowed tonight, so therefore that was the way the game played tonight, and Pittsburgh played it incredibly well.”

Calhoun stopped short of criticizing one official in particular, but there were enough aspersions to keep us guessing. Perhaps when he revisits the game with some distance, he’ll appreciate it’s brutally fierce flavor.

Only if the outcome is a win for UConn will Calhoun appreciate any game.

Obviously it was a shock to the Connecticut media to see Thabeet so completely dominated.

From the beginning, there was no match for Blair. He dominated his high-profile matchup with Thabeet, who fouled out and finished with five points, four rebounds and two blocks. Thabeet, the Big East player of the week the past two weeks, was 1-for-5 and hurt his left elbow when he was flipped over Blair’s back in an early tussle for a rebound. The injury wasn’t serious, and he quickly returned.

“I couldn’t get going,” Thabeet said. “You’ve got to be alive from the beginning of the game. If you fall asleep a little bit, he takes advantage of that.”

Blair earned the admiration of those who saw him.

The big fella, — or just “fella” to the crazies that bow to him nightly in the Petersen Events Center — Blair went off on No. 1 UConn. He made Hasheem Thabeet look silly, he made Jeff Adrien frustrated and made Huskies head coach Jim Calhoun look as if he was about to blow his stack.

The sophomore forward was the headline act Monday night in a 76-68 Pitt victory at the XL Center And Blair got the star treatment by ESPN’s Jay Bilas afterward, saying how he just wanted to “go right at” Thabeet.

And he did.

He went at Thabeet. He went at Adrien. He went at Gavin Edwards. If Calhoun had thrown Jonathan Mandeldove or the manager or the water boy in there, Blair would have gone right at them, too. And would have scored.

The big fella, 6-foot-7 and 265 pounds, was unstoppable. He had 20-20 vision. As in 22 points and 23 rebounds. There was a stretch of possessions late in the first half, six of them in a row, where Blair went down and just embarrassed Thabeet. A jump hook to start, then an inside move, a fadeaway jumper from the left wing, a left-handed hook in close (for the record, Blair is right-handed), another move with the left hand for a three-point play, a baseline layup. Each time the big fella just smiled and lumbered back down court.

“I came out here with the mindset that I was the underdog,” Blair said. “He (Thabeet) blocked a couple of my shots, but I got it right back and went to him. That’s how I am. I said this last year. I don’t care if it’s 4 and 6 (points and rebounds) or 7 and 8, I’m going to play hard regardless.”

It’s no surprise. Blair is tough and physical, but as anyone who has watched him knows, he plays with an infectuous joy.

Blair was just too strong and too relentless for Thabeet and UConn on this night. Undaunted, he came at the Huskies again and again, as did his teammates (in particular, Sam Young). Round one of this classic rivalry went to the Panthers, with at least one and maybe two or three more to go.

“I played excellent, my team played excellent and we beat the No. 1 team,” said a smiling Blair after the game. “It shows a lot about this team, that we come in here to play the No. 1 team in a hostile environment and win the game.”

There might be tougher and more determined players in the country than Blair, but anyone who watched this game would be hard pressed to think of one.

The sophomore—yes, sophomore—scored 22 points and finished with 23 rebounds. It’s the second time he’s gone 20-20 this season, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished by a Pitt player in the past 17 years before this season.

The 23 rebounds were just eight less than the entire Connecticut team—which had outrebounded its last 32 opponents— managed to corral. Let that sink in for a minute.

It has sunk.