After Connecticut guard Jerome Dyson fell to the floor with a season-ending knee injury Feb. 11, it seemed the national title hopes of the then-No. 1 Huskies collapsed with him.
Connecticut lost three of its next seven games without the Potomac native, the team’s primary 3-point threat, and stumbled to a third-place finish in the Big East regular-season standings and a quarterfinal exit from the conference tournament.
“We were really rolling when Jerome went down,” said Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, whose top-seeded Huskies (29-4) face No. 5 seed Purdue (27-9) on Thursday in Glendale, Ariz., in the West Region semifinals. “We won at Gonzaga. We went to Louisville and won by 17. We went to West Virginia and won there. We went to Notre Dame and broke their 45-game [home] winning streak when they were playing well.
“Then Jerome goes down, and you have to make a major adjustment 24 games into the season. I could have downplayed it, but I did the exact opposite - not to give us an excuse but to challenge the guys. I told them every day we had to reshape our team to fill that void if we wanted to achieve our goals. I really like how we’ve responded.”
In the nine games since Dyson’s injury, Connecticut starters A.J. Price and Stanley Robinson have exploded into the vacuum.
Price nearly has doubled his scoring output down the stretch for the Huskies, averaging 20.2 points since Dyson’s departure while increasing both his assists (5.8) and field goal percentage (.419).
The performance leap has been even more stark for Robinson. The 6-foot-9 swingman who has blossomed into both a dangerous scorer (12.4 points) and rebounder (8.3) in the last six weeks.
“He’s trying to be that other guy because we talked about reshaping our team once Jerome went down,” Calhoun said. “It seems the more success he has, the harder he works. … Athletically, I wouldn’t have said this three months ago, but some of the things he’s done recently in games and in practice are equal to [former UConn All-American] Rudy Gay. The kind of thing where the ball is much above the square, and all of a sudden he just plucks it down. Basketballwise, he’s got a great sense of the game. His problem has always been that Stanley Robinson gets down on himself. But he’s been playing great of late. He’s making shots, working extremely hard and athletically, he makes plays that most guys can’t even dream about making.”
The growth of Price and Robinson was on display in the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament in Philadelphia. The pair combined to average 41.5 points, 11.5 rebounds and six assists in the Huskies’ routs of Chattanooga and Texas A&M. The Huskies’ 82-point combined margin of victory was the most in the event’s opening rounds since Duke dispatched its first two opponents by the same total in 1999.
“This is a veteran group that has been together for a few years now, and we came in with a sense of urgency and an understanding of what we need to do, regardless of the loss of Jerome,” Price said after his 27-point, eight-assist effort against the Aggies. “We are locked in because this is an important time of year, the most special time of the year. Focus is an absolute necessity.”
The last uber-talented Connecticut bunch to reach the Sweet 16 lacked similar resolve. In 2006, the top-seeded Huskies rolled into the East Region final at Verizon Center with an all-star cast that included Gay, Josh Boone, Hilton Armstrong, Rashad Anderson and Marcus Williams but lost 86-84 in overtime to No. 11 seed George Mason.
“Coach has made a point to tell us he thinks [looking forward to the NBA] hurt the ’06 team,” Price said. “We won’t let that happen.
“Between Jerome going down and Coach being hospitalized, everyone in this locker room knows what it means to focus and respond in the face of distractions, and we’re going to keep it going.”
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