This isn’t anything new for Steve Lappas.
“I’ve been in a couple of [rivalry games],” the UMass skipper said last night after his weekly radio show on WHMP. “At Manhattan it was Manhattan-Fordham. At Villanova it was Villanova-St. Joe’s. In both cases a lot of the families had kids go to both schools. So there were a lot of families where some kids would go to Manhattan, some would go to Fordham. Some would go to St. Joe’s, some would go to Villanova. And I guess there’s a lot of families that had kids go to UMass and kids go to UConn.
“So, it’s that kind of rivalry.”
Coming off its 80-78 heartbreaker at No. 13 Boston College, the Massachusetts men’s basketball team hosts Connecticut in the sixth annual MassMutual “U” Game tonight at 9 p.m. at the Mullins Center in what looks to be UMass’ first sellout since Feb. 17 versus Temple last season. As of last night, only 900 tickets remained to be sold.
UConn has won the last 10 meetings between these two schools and comes in 4-1, just off an 80-44 blowout of Northeastern Saturday. The Huskies’ only loss came last Monday at the MCI Center (Washington, D.C.) in a 77-65 letdown to Maryland in the final of the BB’T Classic.
The Minutemen stand at 4-2 after the loss to BC Saturday and their 67-56 disappointment to Holy Cross last Tuesday. But they’re ready to get things going again against their biggest rival.
“We’re at home and we just lost two in a row, so we need this one bad – it’s like a must win to keep us going,” said Anthony Anderson who scored a team-high 19 points against the Eagles to boost his average to 9.7 points a game. “It’s going to be a big game, it’s going to be packed. And we’ll be ready to go.”
The hitch for UMass in its last two games has been its failure to put together two halves of solid play.
Saturday at Conte Forum the Maroon and White limped into the locker room down 44-21 to BC after shooting a miserable 25 percent (8-for-32) from the floor while hitting only one of its 3-point attempts. But in the second half the Minutemen turned things around, shooting 59.5 percent (22-for-37) from the field while draining 6-of-11 from behind the arc.
Against Holy Cross, UMass led 36-32 at halftime but flopped in the second stanza as the Crusaders outscored the Minutemen 35-20 to pull out the upset.
“Everybody just has to come and play hard,” said Anderson, who is averaging 33 minutes a game at the point. “At times when we’re not hitting shots, we’ll come down and slack on defense. That can’t happen. Regardless if the shots are falling or not we have to stay focused and execute.”
UConn floors maybe the most athletic team the Minutemen will see all season. The Huskies are like Oregon – who UMass beat 62-58 on Nov. 27 – as far as their dependence in the transition game, but overall they are more athletic and take it stronger and more often to the cylinder.
“They’re not quite the 3-point shooters,” said Lappas, who is 6-10 all time versus Jim Calhoun’s squad. “But they run even faster and they crash the boards even better.”
Lappas mentioned that stopping 6-foot-7-inch sophomore Caron Butler will be key to his team’s success. On the year, Butler is leading UConn with 17.6 points a game and is pulling down 5.8 boards.
Joining Butler on the blocks is 6-foot-9-inch freshman center Emeka Okafor and the 6-foot-7-inch senior Johnnie Selvie. In last year’s “U”-Game, Butler and Selvie both netted 14 for the Huskies to lead them to the 82-67 triumph at the Hartford Civic Center, a loss that dropped the Minutemen to 1-6 on the season, as UConn went to 8-1.
The Huskie backcourt is led by junior Tony Robertson who is averaging 13.2 points a game and sophomore native Taliek Brown (6.0 ppg) who will battle with Anderson in the backcourt, for what could be seen as a long-awaited duel.
“I was at Adidas Camp the same year [Taliek] was, but we didn’t get a chance to play each other,” said Anderson, who will also see one of his old teammates for the first time in a couple years.
“I’m finally get to play against someone that I know,” said Anderson about UConn’s Scott Hazelton, who played with him on the Mass. Wildcats in the AAU program. “It’s going to be fun. I haven’t seen or talked to him since our last AAU tournament.”
