Connecticut slaps Vanderbilt out of NCAA tournament
PHOENIX (AP) — Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun makes his players slap the floor on defense during practice. It’s so ingrained now, some of the Huskies even do it in games.
“The first thing he told me when I got to Connecticut was score and play defense,” forward Rashad Anderson recalled.
Anderson did both for UConn in its 73-53 victory over Vanderbilt in the semifinals of the Phoenix Regional on Thursday night — and the Huskies are going to need another strong defensive game when they face spoiler Alabama on Saturday for a trip to the Final Four.
UConn’s Ben Gordon had 20 points, nine rebounds and five assists against the cold-shooting Commodores, who never could find any rhythm against the Huskies’ in-your-face pressure defense.
The second-seeded Huskies (30-6) now must try to slow down a Crimson Tide team that sent defending NCAA champion Syracuse packing only five days after shocking top-seeded and No. 1 Stanford.
“A team has to beat us,” Calhoun said. “I don’t want to lose.”
Anderson scored 15 points and Emeka Okafor added 12 points and 11 boards for UConn, which staved off a 16-3 second-half spurt by Vandy (23-10), which got outrebounded 41-17.
Matt Freije, Vanderbilt’s career scoring leader, shot 3-of-18 for eight points after scoring 31 points in his team’s 75-73 second-round win over North Carolina State.
“I felt like every one of them was going to go down, or at least the majority of them, but they seemed to rattle out,” Freije said. “We came out and had a deer-in-the-headlight look. We decided to start playing in the second half, but it was too little too late.”
Smith and Mario Moore each scored 12 for Vandy, which shot 35 percent.
Leading up to the game, Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings called UConn “probably the most talented team in the tournament” and he might be right.
Sixth-seeded Vanderbilt, in the final 16 for the first time in 11 years, declared itself the underdog Wednesday and was overmatched athletically on Thursday.
“We got off to a poor start,” Stallings said. “We talked about getting off to a good start and controlling the pace of the game. Getting off to a poor start, we were a lot more subjected to the pace they wanted.
“We showed some fight and grit in the second half by making a game out of it, but when you get down big to a team as good as Connecticut you’ll have a hard time coming back.”
Taliek Brown added 12 points as four Huskies starters reached double figures, but UConn was unhappy with its 18 turnovers.
Brown, the pesky UConn point guard who’s been inconsistent this season, has scored in double digits in all three tournament games. The four-year starter scored 14 and 11 points in the first two rounds — the only time this season he’s had double figures in consecutive games.
Anderson keyed a 17-1 run in the first half, scoring seven straight including two 3-pointers, as UConn built a 25-8 lead and quickly established the up-tempo game it wanted — and Vanderbilt hoped to avoid.
Vandy knew it would have a difficult time if it didn’t play a near-perfect game, and the Nashville, Tenn., school couldn’t even make up ground when Okafor watched from the bench with two fouls for the final 7:02 of the first half.
UConn had an answer for the few runs Vandy mustered, crashing the offensive glass to get easy putbacks and demoralizing dunks.
“They got the ball out in transition,” Moore said. “They were able to knock down some shots, and at the end of the day, when you don’t rebound and when you don’t get back in transition, you’re going to lose.”
Okafor, who was recruited by Vanderbilt, showed no signs of trouble from an ailing back that has bothered him all season. He sat out two games during the Big East tournament before returning for the championship game against Pittsburgh.
Freije looked nothing like the player he’d been only four days earlier. Against NC State, Freije made four 3-pointers and shot 11-for-11 at the free-throw line for the overachieving Commodores, who reached the tournament for the first time since 1997.
“We did a great job of contending every shot,” UConn forward Josh Boone said. “We made sure we always had a hand in his face. We tried to bump him a little bit so he had to fade away.”
Anderson, a feisty 6-5 sophomore averaging 10.4 points coming in, didn’t start until Feb. 24 at St. John’s. The Huskies are 9-0 with him as a starter.