Down by one point, UConn star Alex Karaban missed consecutive free throws in crunch time Wednesday at Villanova that could have given the Huskies the lead — and maybe the eventual win — with only a few seconds remaining in what ultimately resulted in an 68-66 loss. It was the first time in his college career to ever miss both free throws in a single visit to the charity stripe in a stunning turn of events for a key piece of UConn’s back-to-back championship-winning teams.
After the game, UConn coach Dan Hurley offered all the typical coach-speak you’d expect from a coach offering support to one of his best players in expressing love and support for Karaban. But Hurley is not your typical coach, after all, so his response postgame as you might expect was far from typical.
“He’s the winningest player in college basketball,” Hurley said. “When you’ve had the incredible moments, the fairy tale back-to-back national champion coming back for a third, it’s like life: sometimes you’ve got to eat shit, you know?”
Hurley recognized that no player is perfect — not even Karaban, one of the most important pieces to UConn’s success the last two years — but he praised him for his aggressiveness in the close loss and offered him some advice that Hurley says helped him get past UConn’s three-game Maui skid from November.
“What I told him to do was though, when he feels sad tonight, just get off the bus when we get back to campus and do what I did after Maui,” Hurley said. “Just pull your box of rings out and maybe just kind of play with your back-to-back, national championship rings and get ready for Georgetown.”
Karaban, who finished the game with 10 points and four assists, smartly attacked the basket with UConn trailing 67-66 in the closing seconds and drew a foul that sent him to the line for a pair of free throws with 3.1 seconds remaining. While he missed both, it was a smart sequence that highlighted his play in the second half, where he had eight of his 10 points and nearly led UConn back from a 12-point deficit to a win.
“I was real disappointed with how Alex started the game,” Hurley said, noting he was too passive out of the gate. “But I loved the way he wanted the ball at the end of the game and wanted to make the plays and wanted to be that guy for us. I love that kid to death.”
Karaban is a career 83% shooter from the free throw line.
