Hard work turned UConn from a one-man show into a championship team

HOUSTON - March 6th.

It was a Sunday.

The previous afternoon, UConn had blown a late lead to Notre Dame despite carrying all the momentum into the final five minutes while Ben Hansbrough sat on the bench with five fouls. It ended an ugly finish to the regular season for the Huskies. The same team that had won the Maui Invitational and beat Texas at Texas had just lost four of their last five games. They had fallen to 9-9 in Big East play -- 4-9 against teams from the league that made the NCAA Tournament -- which was good for ninth place and a Tuesday game in the Big East Tournament.

But on that Sunday, Selection Sunday, UConn had their best practice of the year. It was a practice that would change the trajectory of the Huskies' season drastically.

"After our loss to Notre Dame, we had a great practice after that," Kemba Walker said during the Big East Tournament. "Everybody showed up ready to work and we knew it was a new season."

"Everybody stayed together and our coaching staff did a great job of keeping us positive."

UConn's run through March, their five wins in five days in the Big East Tournament and the program's third national title in 12 years, seemingly came completely out of the blue. UConn was losing games. Their superstar was no longer superhuman. Their supporting cast was about as supportive as a pair of boxers that are one size too big. Something changed with this team heading into March.

And to a man, every player I asked mentioned the March 6th practice as the season's turning point. What was so great about one practice that turned a team that had lost four of their last five games into the winner of the Big East Tournament and national title?

"Its hard to explain because you had to actually be there," Shabazz Napier said after the game. "Guys were just playing great defense, guys were just rebounding the ball. I don't think coach yelled at anybody that practice, and for him not to yell at anyone in practice? Wow."

"When you lose a regular season game, you come into practice like 'Man, I don't want to practice', but we all wanted to practice. We knew what we had ahead of us."

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The luster on this UConn team had faded.

What was once a 17-2 start ended up being a 21-9 finish. Much was made about the fact that the team that was predicted to finish 10th in the Big East had knocked off teams like Kentucky and Michigan State and Texas during the non-conference portion of their schedule, but by the time the regular season had ended the Huskies were sitting at 9-9 in league play.

A ninth place finish. That prediction didn't look so bad anymore.

The problems that were facing UConn had to do with the load that was being shouldered by their superstar. Kemba Walker spent the first month of the season wowing everyone in the country with his ability to dominate a game while only cracking six feet thanks to the rubber soles on the bottom of his basketball shoes.

But once Big East play started, teams had figured out how to stop the Huskies. They learned that UConn was beatable when you forced Kemba into taking tough shots by playing sloughing man-to-man defenses or compacted zones. Keep Kemba from going crazy and take your chances that the young players won't beat you. That was the blueprint. Those adjustments were what you needed to do to beat the Huskies.

Jim Calhoun had a couple of adjustments of his own, however.

"We thought the way to disguise our youth was get better at defense every day," Calhoun said. "Down the stretch, we would take literally 50% of practice on nothing but defense. Two-on-two, three-on-three, shell, five-on-five, retreat. That's much more than almost any other team I've done."

"You need to understand that defense is going to really take you and hold you in any game till your offense gets going. I think that's what happened tonight."

That hard work paid off.

UConn's defense was legendary on Monday night. Record-breaking. The Huskies held Butler to just 18.8% shooting on the night. Seriously. 18.8%. It broke a record for the worst shooting performance in a national title game, a record that had stood since 1941, when Wisconsin held Washington State to 21.5% shooting from the floor.

Butler made just 12 field goals the entire game. They were 6-37 in the second half, at one point missing 22 of 23 shots. Their 9-33 performance from beyond the arc looks terrific compared to the 3-31 that the Bulldogs shot from two point range. Butler even threw in an 8-14 showing from the free throw line for good measure.

"From a purist's standpoint, you want to teach defense? Take a clip of both teams, you'd see some terrific defense," Calhoun said.

In an overwhelming defensive performance like this, its tough to label anyone the hero. There wasn't one person that shut down the Bulldogs. It was a team effort. Butler didn't have a single player on their roster shoot better than 27.3% from the floor Monday night. One person cannot do that to a team.

But there were notable performances. Like the job that Jeremy Lamb did on Shelvin Mack. Mack managed just 13 points on 4-15 shooting. All four of his field goals came from beyond the arc. Two of those -- his first field goal of the game with 4:00 left in the first half and the three he hit at the first half buzzer -- came when Donnell Beverly was guarding Mack late in the first half when Lamb was on the bench with two fouls. In the other 31 minutes, Lamb allowed Mack to make just two shots from the floor.

Then there was Alex Oriakhi. The 6'9" sophomore was once again a monster in the paint, living up to his "Warriakhi" nickname with 11 rebounds and four blocked shots. He helped hold Matt Howard to just seven points on 1-13 shooting and Andrew Smith to five points on 2-9 shooting. All told, those two managed to score just two points in the paint.

"To me that's beauty," Calhoun said. "That's what this game should be about."

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Back in November and December, the running joke was that UConn was the "Fighting Kembas", alluding to the fact that the Huskies were nothing more than what Kemba Walker could provide.

And while that theory looks silly after watching Jeremy Lamb and Alex Oriakhi carry the Huskies to a national title, back then the theory was anything but. They were young, freshmen and sophomores that not only had potential, but a ways to go to reach that potential.

There was plenty of criticism to go around. But it all came back to one thing -- the Huskies did not have the talent to compete with the best in the country all season long. Eventually, the thinking went, UConn's Kemba-well would dry up, and that is when the Huskies would struggle.

Lamb and Oriakhi both took what the national media was saying to heart. Their response? Hard work.

"People kept saying it was a one-man team, but we had confidence in ourselves," Oriakhi said in the locker room after the game. "We knew how good we could be. We definitely worked our tails off."

Oriakhi had developed the reputation of gym rat over the summer, lifting and working on his game every chance he got. There were two-a-day trips to the weight room in the summer, complimented by on-court workouts improving his back-to-the-basket game and jumper. Eventually, Oriakhi started to bring Lamb with him to these workout sessions, and before long the two budding UConn stars were spending every waking moment in the gym.

"I started getting Jeremy in there as well, and we just got addicted," Oriakhi said. "We really got addicted to it. The addiction got so crazy that we would go after games. Even if we had a good game, bad game, we'd still go after games."

"When I'm in the gym I don't like to waste my time."

Lamb may have been the biggest beneficiary of the late-night workouts.

Early in the season, it was difficult to see just how good Lamb could have been. He's a passive kid by nature. That laid back demeanor carried on to the court, when Lamb was satisfied with simply being a guy that tossed the ball around the perimeter. But as he gained confidence in his ability to make shots when he attacked, Lamb developed into a serious scoring threat at the end of the season. It was his 12 point second half outburst that will be credited with buoying the Huskies.

He was the difference maker for UConn.

"Jeremy, he's a hard worker. He's in the gym every night," Kemba said. "Coach would tell him, 'Jeremy, don't shoot. [Get rest]'. Jeremy would still go shoot. Jeremy would have a bad game and go straight to the gym after that. He's just a hard worker. All his hard work pays off."

The same can be said for Oriakhi. Early in the game, UConn was feeding him the ball in the paint. With Kemba Walker off target, the two early buckets that Oriakhi had helped to settle down the Huskies. The 6'9", 240 lb sophomore missed much of the first half due to foul trouble, but when he returned in the second half, he scored another early bucket in the post, and knocked down a pair of jumpers late in the game that helped extend UConn's lead.

"The hard work has definitely paid off," Oriakhi said. "That's definitely the best feeling. Going after practice when you don't feel like it, you're exhausted but you push through it, that's the best feeling."

"You know that all the paid has paid off."

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UConn's season had come full circle.

It started as the Kemba show. It started as a one-man army. It started with Walker etching his name into the Maui Invitational record books while carrying this team and program on his diminutive shoulders. It ended with one of Kemba's worst performances of the season. He finished with just 16 points on 5-19 shooting. He had two turnovers and not a single assist. As Jim Calhoun would have put it, Kemba had an expensive 16 points.

But the season also ended with UConn being a team. It ended with 11 points, 11 boards, and four blocks from Alex Oriakhi. It ended with 12 second half points from Jeremy Lamb. It ended with 10 guys getting into the score book, and all ten making their impact on the game felt.

Who could have predicted that four months ago? Who thought that UConn could win a national title on a night where the only noteworthy comment to make on Kemba Walker's play is that is wasn't noteworthy?

"From last season, the loss to Virginia Tech, coach, he gave me the keys," Kemba said. "From that point on, I just drove. I called these guys, told them that we gonna work hard. Just be ready to come and work hard."

"That's what they did."