Williams will test Kemba, UConn

Can it really have been only a month ago that I wrote this about the Connecticut Huskies?

It reads like an artifact from a distant and forgotten era. That was before Connecticut won five games in five days to take home the Big East tournament title. Now, after Thursday night's 74-67 win over the San Diego State Aztecs, the Huskies find themselves just 40 minutes away from their second Final Four in three years. Heading into their Elite Eight matchup against the Arizona Wildcats, February's struggles are indeed both distant and, rightly, forgotten.

Over the past eight games UConn has quite simply been better than any team they've come across. Since the tip-off of their first game in the Big East tournament, Connecticut has played 531 possessions of March basketball, and in that time it's scored 621 points. That works out to 1.17 points per possession. During the Big East regular season, on the other hand, Calhoun's team scored just 1.03 points per trip. Whatever he said in his pregame speech before that first game at Madison Square Garden, Calhoun should definitely keep saying it.

To read more about the sources of UConn's turnaround, and the ways in which Derrick Williams and Arizona could cause the Huskies problems, you must be an ESPN Insider.

• Recommend0
• Tweet0
• Email
• Subscribe

John Gasaway

ESPN Insider

• Archive

• ESPN Insider college basketball contributor
• First began covering college hoops in 2004
• Has written for Basketball Prospectus and the Wall Street Journal