The No. 23 UConn Huskies are back home and will play at Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, hosting American Athletic Conference foe Memphis at its on-campus facility on Saturday.
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“I got better from it, definitely”, Hamilton said. Once I saw the ball get pretty close to him, I didn’t think about fouling him.
Sterling Gibbs picked a ideal night for his best game with UConn. He led the Big East while playing for Seton Hall a year ago by connecting on 43.6 percent of his attempts. He made seven of his 11 shots against Memphis, including 5 of 7 from 3-point range. Five players finished the night with at least 10 points, including four players with 13 points each. Memphis won on Shaq Goodwin’s short fall-away jumper with 8 seconds left as the Huskies suffered through their worst shooting performance since February 8, 1997.
It wasn’t over yet, however, as Burrell countered with a 3-pointer and Hamilton was fouled with 2.3 seconds remaining.
“We’ve got to respond and learn from it”, Ollie said. “I think we really tried to focus in the last couple days of practice of making sure that we played with desperation”.
Memphis spent much of the second half in foul trouble.
But Gibbs and Hamilton each hit a pair of foul shots to give the Huskies a 78-75 advantage. He hit both freebies to put UConn up three, and after Dedric Lawson turned the ball over, Gibbs was fouled with 9.2 seconds left and hit both free throws. There’s no way we should shoot two free throws in a half against Temple. The Tigers swept the two-game season series in 2014-15, including a 54-53 win at Gampel in the last meeting on March 5. He went 2-for-11 from the floor and jacked up an ill-advised three-pointer late that helped Memphis stay in the game. Goodwin was tagged with fouls on consecutive plays with just under eight minutes left. But Goodwin fouled Miller on the other end and fouled out of the game.
“We had to win the game”.
“We can’t have self-inflicted wounds on some of these games, that’s biting us in the butt”, Memphis coach Josh Pastner said. “They were stretching it (the lead) a little bit and we needed scoring in there”.
The Oklahoma women’s basketball program will play a four-year, home-and-home series with three-time defending champion CT.
Goodwin scored four quick points, the second on a dunk in transition, to give the visitors an early 6-2 lead.
“It’s awfully hard not having Shaq there for 16 minutes. We’ve just got to make sure we go get Memphis”. UConn (10-4) is coming off a 55-53 setback to Temple on Tuesday at the XL Center in Hartford. Hamilton is 4-for-24 from the field over his last two games. Five players average nine points or more.
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The Huskies own a flawless 4-0 mark at Gampel Pavilion and are 39-12 (.765) in the building over the last six seasons.
