Michael Cohen
College Football and College Basketball Writer
Approximately 30 minutes after UConn committed its 47th and final turnover of a mistake-ridden two-game stretch against Marquette and St. John’s earlier this month, with the Huskies miraculously surviving to beat the former and then falling agonizingly short at home against the latter, the man who is ultimately responsible for those mistakes rubbed his head in frustration and told a room of reporters that the situation made him feel like “a s—ty coach.” Hyperbole coming from someone who guided Connecticut to back-to-back national championships the last two seasons, but deeply apropos for the youngest and most self-deprecating son within a family known for its otherworldly basketball accomplishments.
A chunk of Dan Hurley’s unrest could be rightly attributed to the caliber of defenses his team had faced, with both the Golden Eagles and Red Storm known for their swarming pressure. Hurley acknowledged as much during his postgame news conference last Friday at Gampel Pavilion, after the Huskies fell to St. John’s, 68-62. He reminded the media that not every team in the Big East defends with as much force or disruption as UConn’s last two opponents, both of whom were ranked in the top 12 of the AP Poll when those games were played, on Feb. 1 and Feb. 7, respectively.
But there was another layer to Hurley’s displeasure surrounding what he knew to be a potentially critical flaw for the Huskies regardless of which opponent they faced, the kind of issue that — if left unfixed — could transform their pursuit of a third consecutive title into a protracted effort to land on the desirable side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. The team’s starting point guard, Hassan Diarra, was “hobbled” by an undisclosed knee injury that Hurley said would take the better part of two months to properly heal. Diarra had limped and labored through 34 minutes against St. John’s in the absence of a viable replacement, but his efficacy on both ends of the floor seemed to evaporate with every attempted change of direction.
“I don’t know what we’re gonna do about the point guard situation with Hassan’s health and the lack of answers that we have there,” Hurley said on Friday night, glancing down at a box score that revealed just six minutes for reserve guard Aidan Mahaney, the only backcourt player to come off the bench against St. John’s. Small forward Liam McNeeley, who himself was returning from a nine-game absence due to a high ankle sprain, described Diarra as a “warrior” and told reporters, “I don’t know what else we could ask of him.”
From the moment that game ended, Hurley and his staff had approximately three days to formulate their plan for a difficult game at No. 24 Creighton, a team against whom the Huskies were winless in four attempts on the road. They had numerous permutations to sift through: from asking Diarra to grimace his way through another load-bearing effort, which always seemed unlikely, to leaning more heavily on Mahaney, a high-profile addition through the transfer portal whose impressive production the last two seasons at Saint Mary’s hasn’t followed him to UConn; from handing the keys to scarcely used and oft-injured true freshman Ahmad Nowell, the No. 37 overall recruit in the 2024 recruiting cycle, to ditching a traditional point guard all together and relying instead on the versatile McNeeley, a 6-foot-7 and 210-pound playmaker who blurs the lines between guard and forward, joining the program as the fourth highest-rated recruit in school history when he flipped from Indiana last spring. “I guess if you’re gonna turn the ball over anyway,” Hurley quipped on a conference call the day before tipoff against Creighton, “maybe it’s better to be taller [with McNeeley on the floor].”
Glommed onto the end of an answer about Mahaney’s potential involvement, the joke from Hurley wound up portending exactly what the Huskies planned to do against Creighton, dropping Diarra from the starting lineup and entrusting McNeeley with the ball instead. What followed was one of the greatest individual performances UConn’s storied program has ever seen, with McNeeley igniting for a career-high 38 points and 10 rebounds to spearhead an emotional 70-66 victory in which the visitors erased a double-digit deficit and snapped the Bluejays’ nine-game winning streak. McNeeley became just the third Division I freshman in the last 20 years to score at least 30 points, grab at least 10 rebounds and make at least five 3-pointers in a road game, according to OptaSTATS, placing him in rare air alongside former Davidson star Steph Curry and former Texas great Kevin Durant, both future Hall-of-Famers.
“That guy is going to be a top-10 pick [in the NBA Draft],” Hurley said after the game, joined by McNeeley for a joyful news conference. “He’s one of the best players in the country, and no freshman has had a more impressive performance in a road environment like this versus a team like that, with their type of defensive scheme, which is a total nightmare to play against. Amazing.”
McNeeley had only recently made his return from a month-long absence that coincided with one of the team’s rougher stretches of the season. He eschewed what Hurley had outlined as a probable restriction on playing time to score 18 points and grab 11 rebounds in nearly 30 minutes of action against St. John’s. That he immediately became UConn’s most assertive and effective offensive player in the second half — hurling himself into the teeth of the second-best defense in the nation to draw fouls and generate paint touches — prompted head coach Rick Pitino to describe McNeeley as a “lottery pick” and gush about how much he adores the freshman’s game. To that point in the season, McNeeley’s usage rate of 34% against the Red Storm, which measures how many of a team’s possessions a certain player is responsible for ending, was the highest by any Husky with more than 16 minutes of playing time in a single game.
It’s a number that foreshadowed just how integral McNeeley would be against Creighton as he imprinted himself almost immediately on Tuesday night. McNeeley scored UConn’s opening basket by drilling the first of his five 3-pointers — which established a new career high — he’d already hoisted six shots by the 14-minute mark of the first half, at which point no other UConn player had attempted more than two field goals and none of his teammates had scored. His personal flurries of nine consecutive points in the first half and eight straight points in the second resembled breathtaking blurs of individual skill. He accounted for 18 of his team’s 25 points over the last 12 minutes and sealed the victory with two free throws in the waning seconds. By the time it finally ended, McNeeley’s usage rate had surged to 37% — the highest by a Connecticut player with comparable playing time since All-American guard Tristen Newton was used on 40% of possessions in a loss to the Bluejays last year. McNeeley shot 12-for-22 from the field, including 5-for-10 from beyond the arc, and made nine of 10 from the free-throw line.
“An unbelievable performance by McNeeley,” said Creighton head coach Greg McDermott. “We hadn’t seen him before [in our first matchup against UConn], and he was as good as advertised and then some,” later adding, “We lost to a heck of a basketball team, and a guy that will be playing in the NBA next year had an incredible night. We let him get started, and then once he got started, he was really hard to stop.”
The singularity of McNeeley’s performance was exactly what UConn needed at a time when Hurley has been searching for more players who can create their own shots, the result of which is a reduced reliance on choreographed half-court sets. It’s a counterbalance the Huskies lost from last year’s championship team following the departures of Newton, Cam Spencer and Stephon Castle, three players with enough athleticism or guile — or both — to improvise within the confines of an offensive philosophy. Diarra can provide intermittent flashes of that ability when healthy, but the prolonged struggles of Mahaney and the limited involvement of Nowell have rendered Connecticut’s backcourt thin on creativity.
How replicable and sustainable a McNeeley-centric offense proves to be in the coming weeks will go a long way toward determining the veracity of UConn’s quest for a third consecutive national title, especially now that its opponents have seen the wrinkle on film. The next test will be a road game at Seton Hall on Saturday afternoon (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX). But for a team whose season was threatening to teeter, McNeeley’s reemergence has come at exactly the right time.
“He’s got swagger,” Hurley said. “He’s got the swagger that guys like Cam Spencer and Donovan Clingan had, that kind of ‘F-you’ type of thing that, you know, he’s our biggest personality. And we missed that. That’s been an ingredient that has really hurt us in some of these late-game situations.”
Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.
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