One shining moment
You could tell that it was going to be a terrible night for Vanderbilt early on. Just 7 1/2 minutes into the game, the Commodores' main gun, Matt Freije, pulled up for a short-range jumper from the left wing and missed badly. Which, unfortunately for him and those pulling for Vandy, already had become all too predictable. That shot was his seventh miss in eight tries, something that pretty much sealed Vandy's fate. Most telling, perhaps, was Freije's reaction after the shot: a quick, guttural scream. If UConn hadn't suspected it before, the Huskies knew then that Freije was frustrated. And so the Huskies put even more pressure on the senior forward. Most of the time, UConn's Josh Boone faced him up, but whomever was there seemed to do the job. Freije was 1-for-9 in the first half -- including 0-for-4 from the 3-point line -- and finished 3-for-18, missing all six of his 3-point tries. When he missed that shot in the first half, the Commodores already were down 12-7. They never got any closer.
Player who impressed me
At this point of the season, it's hard to find anyone who hasn't done something good for his team. Boone certainly did the job on Freije. But UConn's Ben Gordon did plenty, too. Gordon is one of those guards who seemingly can score whenever he wants and can take over a game on a whim. He has a nice repertoire of moves to get inside and he's deadly from range (only Ray Allen has a better 3-point percentage at Connecticut). Gordon scored eight points in the last seven minutes of the first half -- all with big man Emeka Okafor on the bench. When Okafor went out of the lineup with his second foul, with 7:02 left, the Huskies led by 18 points, at 29-11. Thanks to Gordon, the Huskies didn't miss a beat, leading by 18 at the half, 45-27. And then, early in the second half, after the Commodores cut that lead to seven with a 7-0 run, Gordon drove to the basket through traffic and put in a nice, spinning right-handed layup during a 8-0 run that made things comfortable again for the Huskies.
Courtside confidential
The talk in the Huskies' locker room was of the job Boone did on Freije, but it was also clear that Vandy didn't even want to contest the Huskies on the boards. Clear, that is, to everyone but Okafor. "I don't know, man," he told me. "I just see the ball, get the ball and run, run, run." ... During that sloppy spurt in the first minutes of the second half, you better believe the Huskies heard from coach Jim Calhoun and others on the bench. "They're real verbal out there," Gordon said with a smile. "We don't have any trouble hearing what they're saying." ... There are good shooting gyms and great shooting gyms. The Huskies were 17-of-30 (56.7 percent) against the Commodores, and are now 3-0 in regional games held at America West Arena in Phoenix. They were 2-0 during their 1999 championship run.
Championship formula
The Huskies have the stuff to win the title -- but not if they play the way they did against Vanderbilt. UConn was plagued by turnovers throughout the game, and a lot of them had nothing to do with the Vandy defense. The Commodores closed within seven points in the second half, thanks to some sloppy UConn ballhandling: passes that went through hands, bad passes, stupid passes. UConn had eight turnovers in the first eight minutes of the second half, the worst stretch in a game in which the Huskies turned the ball over a whopping 18 times. "At this time of the season, you can't afford to throw the ball away as much as we did in that stretch," forward Rashad Anderson said. Still, UConn obviously did plenty of good things. The Huskies grabbed 23 more rebounds (44-21). They had 11 offensive boards, which will come in handy in Saturday's Phoenix finale. They shot 57 percent. And they held the Commodores to 30 percent shooting (a cold-handed Freije, mainly). Okafor will have to play better Saturday, too. He had four turnovers and didn't block a shot.
