PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Dan Hurley is poised for his UConn team to make the most of wins and win some titles, even in early-season tournaments.
The huskies get their chance on Sunday.
Adama Sanogo scored 11 of his 25 points during a crucial run midway through the second half, and No. 20 UConn prevailed in Friday night’s semifinals at the Phil Knight Invitational for an 82-67 win over No. 18 Alabama.
UConn meets Iowa State in the championship game, while Alabama will take on No. 1 seeded North Carolina in Sunday’s third-place playoff.
“The whole mindset of our program this year is like we’ve been struggling for the past few years,” Hurley said. “Fought in the Great East. Participation in tournaments. We’re trying to move from competitor to champion and we’ll get the chance to do that on Sunday.”
While whistles calling fouls dominated most of the night, the UConn crowd’s cheers prevailed in the final 10 minutes as Sanogo and the Huskies finally made a split. The 6-foot-9 forward helped UConn (7-0) turn a 50-50 tie into a 63-53 lead with 5:32. Sango punctuated the 13-3 advance with a fast break dunk and a 3-pointer.
UConn wasn’t ready yet. Tristian Newton added another 3-pointer from a time-out, Sanogo hit in the lane to extend the lead to 15, and Alex Karaban capped the run with a 3-pointer to take the Huskies 71-54 in under four minutes to lead.
Sanogo averaged nearly 20 points per game, surpassing 20 points for the fourth time in seven games. Jordan Hawkins added 16 points, Karaban had 12 and Joey Calcaterra scored 10 off the bench and helped spark a first-half run as the Huskies built a 15-point lead.
“We knew it was going to be a dogfight. We knew we had more heart than they did. We’ve got more heart than a lot of teams in the country,” Hawkins said.
Brandon Miller led Alabama (5-1) by 18 points and Jaden Bradley added 12. But it was a sloppy performance from the Crimson Tide, which included 21 turnovers, 16 in the first half.
“Turnovers killed us in the first half,” said Alabama coach Nate Oats. “We did a good job, I thought we showed that we fought back a couple of times in the second half and finished the game and we just fouled too much.”
The Crimson Tide trailed 33-18 late in the first half and drew four times in the second half. But Alabama never led after going 3-2 in the early minutes.
Teams also often went to the foul line. There were 47 combined fouls and UConn held the foul line 17-18 in the second half.
FRIENDS AGAIN
Hurley and Oats have a long history as friends that began 10 years ago when Hurley recruited E.C. Matthews from Michigan’s Romulus High School to Rhode Island. The head coach at Romulus was Oats.
“I usually bend my stuff into a pretzel before I get to some of these games where there’s these six degrees of separation or whatever,” Hurley said. “But I just looked at it when they won last night how cool and how great an honor it would be to share the spot with Nate with our history, our friendship.”
BIG PICTURE
UConn: The Huskies appreciated their offensive possession in the second half. After 10 turnovers in the first half, UConn were down to two in the final 20 minutes. That stopped Alabama from dropping out in the transition.
Alabama: The Tide attempted to start 6-0 for the first time since the 2012-13 season. They led the country in rebounds per game but ended up with just a 35-32 advantage on the glass against the Huskies.
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