HARTFORD, Conn. — The UConn men’s basketball team stayed over in its Manhattan hotel after it was eliminated by Creighton in the Big East Tournament semifinal Friday night and coaches stayed up preparing a montage of mistakes for the next day.

There was a lot to point out after the Huskies allowed 75% shooting from the field in the first half and took an “immature approach” (head coach Dan Hurley‘s words) on the offensive end in the second, losing 71-62 to the Bluejays and ultimately sealing their fate as a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

“It was a long session,” Hurley said Sunday. “You shouldn’t have sessions that long this time of year. The sessions should be shorter, but we’re still making just tons of mistakes.”

The “brutal” session took place in the morning before the team bus returned to Storrs.

“Definitely too long for our liking, of course, and for coach’s liking. We just see the same mistakes, it’s like he said in the beginning, we’re kind of watching the same movie over and over again, we’re just making the same mistakes,” Solo Ball said. “I think that’s also a good thing, to be honest, you know what you need to work on and we’ve been working on that stuff the whole year. So (the NCAA Tournament) is just an opportunity to prove everything we’ve been working on.”

Hurley learned his lesson three years ago.

After losing on the same stage to Villanova in the 2022 Big East semifinals, the devastation lingered and the team wasn’t ready for its first round game in the NCAA Tournament, losing in a 12-5 upset to New Mexico State. It was the program’s second first round exit in a row. UConn lost again in the Big East semifinals in 2023 and Hurley vowed to flush the loss, to raise the team’s spirits heading into the NCAA Tournament, and it dominated its way to the first of two consecutive titles.

This time Hurley gave the team about 24 hours off upon returning to campus Saturday afternoon, some air to reset before reconvening in the practice facility to get shots up ahead of Sunday’s selection show.

UConn will head to Raleigh, N.C. to meet No. 9 seed Oklahoma in the first round on Friday night, the winner likely to meet No. 1 seed Florida barring a major upset.

As much as the same issues and inconsistencies have hurt the Huskies all year, the win-or-go-home nature of the NCAA Tournament presents an opportunity to start fresh.

“You have a chance in a magical time of year if you play your best basketball – when we’ve played our best basketball we’ve looked like a really good team. We’re a couple of late-game playing and coaching issues away from being a 25-win team or a 26-win team going into this tournament with a much different seeding,” Hurley said.

“We know our floor this year at times has been disappointing, but I do think there’s a ceiling for us that if we get Solo and we get Alex (Karaban) and we get Liam (McNeeley) playing well in the same game, and the two centers playing well in the same game, and get consistent guard play and bench production,” the coach continued. “If we play 75% field goal percentage defense in the first half of any NCAA Tournament game, then it’s gonna be ugly.”

The Huskies have struggled with their defense at the point of attack, allowing ball handlers to get in the lane and either draw fouls or score inside. After having veteran players on the perimeter on each of the last two teams, this year most are first- or second-year players who’ve been learning on the job all season.

The Huskies enter March Madness ranked No. 94 in defensive efficiency by KenPom, the number changing notably after almost every game. They open the tournament against the No. 21 offense in Oklahoma, which averaged 78.8 points per game this season and shot 47.2% from the field (No. 54 nationally) and 36.96% from beyond the arc (No. 40).

“The initial reaction is that it’s like a lack of toughness thing. I think at times it may be some of that, but it’s technique and it’s awareness, it’s being able to absorb scouting, it’s understanding five different ball-screen coverages,” Hurley said. “There’s a lot of terminology, there’s a lot of things that you have to know instinctually that just take some time. We’ve had elite defensive teams because we’ve had some older players – St. John’s is as good a defense as there is in the country, that’s an old and physical team, Houston is one of the best teams in the country, they’re old and physical teams.”

Hurley said after the Creighton game that the Huskies have a number of players who are identified by opponents as defenders to attack.

Ball has been one of them since the start of the season, but his improvement has shown.

“We’ve been working on defense like every single day, throughout practice we do defensive warm up, we do a lot of defensive drills and that’s been improving since the start of the season,” Ball said. “I think it’s actually just an exciting opportunity just to prove how much better we’ve gotten over the year.”

Losing seven players to the NBA Draft over the last two years, several of them known for their elite level of defense, UConn doesn’t have the same intimidation factor that it brought into the tournament in the past.

But the Huskies feel they have a lot to prove and they’ll be ready for the first test on Friday.

“I think this time of year you’re just excited to be in the tournament,” Hurley said. “And we know that teams with high seeds have been able to advance in this tournament in the past, and that we could change the narrative and the storyline for this season and this team by playing great this time of year.”

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