The day that the Associated Press revealed its preseason Top 25, UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley described his team’s No. 3 ranking as a show of disrespect.
Hurley argued that the two-time reigning national champion Huskies earned the right to start the new season No. 1 after bulldozing through the previous two NCAA tournaments “like no one has in a very long time.”
"We dominate for the [2023] national championship, we lose all the players, and then we're even better," Hurley told CT Insider in mid-October. "We dominate even more, we lose all the players ... I think we should've been voted first."
The notion that AP voters undervalued UConn unraveled last week in Maui when the Huskies looked stunningly unprepared for their first tests of the season. They dropped three games in three days to finish dead last at the Maui Invitational, suffering narrow losses to Memphis and Colorado before enduring an 18-point shellacking against Dayton.
Those results suggest that, if anything, AP voters afforded excessive deference to UConn’s championship pedigree and didn’t weigh heavily enough the departure of four 2024 NBA Draft picks. No team that beat UConn in Maui is ranked higher than 24th at KenPom. Colorado was projected to finish second-to-last in the Big 12 entering the season.
To say that UConn (5-3) has been college basketball’s biggest disappointment so far is a massive understatement. This is a Huskies team that began the season with aspirations of becoming the first men’s college basketball program since John Wooden-era UCLA to win three consecutive national championships.
For UConn to even approach preseason expectations, the Huskies must dramatically improve defensively. They allowed 1.34 points per possession against Memphis, 1.20 against Colorado and 1.31 against Dayton. Opponents hunted Aidan Mahaney to attack him off the dribble and took advantage of rotational miscommunications that produced wide-open threes.
UConn also gravely misses Donovan Clingan’s ability to protect the rim and defend the low post without fouling. The Huskies’ top bigs, Samson Johnson and Tarris Reed Jr., fouled out against Memphis and Colorado, forcing Alex Karaban to play out of position at center.
The offense is loaded with outside shooters but so far it hasn't been lethal enough to make up for UConn’s defensive woes. Neither Mahaney nor fellow lead guard Hassan Diarra are as capable playmakers as two-time Final Four MVP Tristen Newton was.
Lastly, Hurley can't self-sabotage his team with sideline outbursts the way he did vs. Memphis and nearly did the following day against Colorado. Yes, the free throw discrepancy in Maui was not in UConn's favor. Yes, some borderline calls at key moments went against the Huskies. But Hurley can't lose his composure and risk more technical fouls. This UConn team doesn't have the margin for error to survive that.
Ultimately, UConn is probably not as bad as it looked in Maui, when the quality of opponents exposed defensive issues and three games in three days left no time to fix them. The next three games against Baylor, Texas and Gonzaga will offer a better barometer whether the Huskies are actually in free fall or just a notch below their impossibly high standard from the previous two seasons.
Of course, UConn isn’t college basketball’s only disappointing team so far this season. Here are five more programs that have failed to meet lofty preseason expectations:
ARIZONA (3-4)
In his first three seasons in Tucson, Tommy Lloyd won 88 games, captured two Pac-12 titles and claimed two conference tournament crowns. Lloyd may have a tough time meeting that standard in year four if the first seven games are any indication.
It was an ominous sign when Arizona surrendered 103 points at Wisconsin. And when the Wildcats lost by 14 at home against Duke a week later. Then the Wildcats dropped two of three games in the Bahamas last week, outclassing Davidson in the Battle 4 Atlantis quarterfinals before suffering narrow losses to Oklahoma and West Virginia.
The 3-point line has been a major source of Arizona’s woes. The Wildcats are shooting an anemic 31% from behind the arc and have surrendered 12 or more threes in all four of their losses. Opposing defenses are happy to let Caleb Love erratically fire away from 3-point range rather than give up driving lanes to Jaden Bradley or allow Motiejus Krivas or Trey Towsend space in the low post.
HOUSTON (4-3)
Houston has endured an unexpectedly rocky start despite returning almost every key player besides All-American guard Jamal Shead from last year’s 32-win team. The Cougars have lost to the three best teams they’ve faced so far this season, each in agonizing fashion.
Auburn rallied from a nine-point, second-half deficit to stun Houston 74-69 on November 9. Alabama erased a four-point deficit with less than three minutes to go in regulation to take down the Cougars in overtime a couple weeks later. Last Saturday, it was San Diego State’s turn. The Aztecs stormed back from an 11-point, second-half deficit and then survived potential game-winning and game-tying shots at the end of regulation and overtime.
So what’s wrong with a Houston team that began the season No. 1 in every major computer metric? Kelvin Sampson lamented to reporters on Saturday that his team “doesn’t have a guy yet” the way that Shead, Marcus Sasser and Quentin Grimes have been for the Cougars in previous years.
“We’re a good team, but that might be all we are right now,” Sampson added. “Just a good team. We’re not really good or very good. We’re good enough to play with all these really good teams because we’ve been in position to beat them all. You could make a case that we could be 7-0 but you could make a case that we’re right where we should be at 4-3. Reality says we’re somewhere in the middle.”
CREIGHTON (5-3)
The warning signs first popped up in Creighton’s season-opening victory over UT Rio Grande Valley. Preseason All-American 7-footer Ryan Kalkbrenner piled up 49 points and the Bluejays needed nearly every one of them to put away a Vaqueros team that lost 25 games last season.
It got worse when Creighton stepped up in competition and lost by double digits on its home floor against in-state rival Nebraska. Then the Bluejays dropped their opening two games of the Players Era Festival against San Diego State and Texas A&M last week before salvaging the seventh-place game against Notre Dame.
Why hasn’t Creighton lived up to its preseason top-15 ranking? Injuries have taken a toll. Kalkbrenner, Steven Ashworth and Pop Isaacs have all sat out a game. Mason Miller has already missed two.
It also hasn’t helped that a team Greg McDermott built on surrounding Kalkbrenner with outside shooters has consistently misfired from 3-point range. Creighton has hoisted 110 3-pointers in its three losses and sank just 31. That 28.2% clip won’t cut it if the Bluejays hope to challenge Marquette and UConn in the Big East.
MIAMI (3-4)
Thanks to the return of experienced guards Nijel Pack and Matthew Cleveland and the arrival of a promising incoming class of transfers, Miami was expected to bounce back from last year’s disappointing sub-.500 season. Instead, the Hurricanes haven’t come close to performing like a team projected to finish in the upper third of the ACC.
It was bad enough when they went winless at the Charleston Classic, suffering consecutive losses to Drake, Oklahoma State and VCU. Then they came home and lost their get-right game to a Charleston Southern team that had not previously beaten a D-I opponent this season.
Yes, Miami’s leading scorer Nijel Pack did not play against Charleston Southern. No, that’s not a sufficient excuse. The Buccaneers were ranked in the 300s at KenPom and entered the game as a 24-point underdog.
Poor defense has been a season-long issue for Miami. So has Cleveland’s regression from NBA prospect to non-factor. The poor start could snowball on Miami in a hurry with matchups against Arkansas, Clemson and Tennessee up next.
VILLANOVA (4-4)
A Villanova program that missed the NCAA tournament in both of Kyle Neptune’s first two seasons opened his third year in exactly the way that he couldn’t afford. The Wildcats have dropped four of their first eight games, including a disastrous home loss to Columbia and a road loss at city rival Saint Joseph’s.
Villanova wasn’t expected to finish in the upper half of the Big East this season, but the Wildcats aren’t even meeting modest preseason expectations. They’ve yet to secure a victory over a top-200 KenPom opponent. They don’t appear to have enough talent around all-conference forward Eric Dixon.
That Villanova has fallen this far this quickly is an indictment of Neptune given the powerhouse program he inherited. Under Jay Wright, Villanova captured the 2016 and 2018 national championships, won at least a share of seven of the previous nine Big East regular-season titles and sent a slew of impact players to the NBA.
The Wildcats haven't made the NCAA tournament since and may not get there this season, either.
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