A NARROW ESCAPE

HARTFORD - Maybe those gray uniforms do have some luck in them.

After falling behind by as many as 13 points in the second half to DePaul, the men's basketball team battled back and came away with a 65-60 victory Tuesday night in front of 14,858 at the XL Center.

The No. 13 Huskies, who say they will wear the gray alternate jerseys until they lose in them, battled to claim their 10th-consecutive victory (sixth-straight in the grays) in what turned out to be a tougher game than many had foreseen.

"I think the result might have been a product of where each team is in their season," said head coach Jim Calhoun.

DePaul (10-15, 6-8 Big East) came out firing in the second half as they went on a 14-0 run to start the final 20 minutes and pushed the score to 42-29. Jeff Adrien got the scoring in the second half started for the Huskies (21-5, 10-3) with a lay-up 3:09 in. Adrien would score UConn's next four points, but DePaul remained up nine points.

The Blue Demons controlled the game for the next 10 minutes, but during that time, the Huskies never doubted that they wouldn't come back.

"Personally I was there, I was real confident," said Craig Austrie, who scored 14 points in the game. "We had plenty of time on the clock and I just wanted to relay that to my teammates and tell them we had plenty of time to get this going."

"Sometimes habits develop because teams win and they believe they can still win," Calhoun said. "We tried to remind them we were only down four or five hoops; all they had to do was make a few stops."

DePaul didn't relinquish their large lead until shortly after Austrie hit a 3-pointer with 5:17 to go, which cut the score to 57-53.

Austrie, who hit the game-winning shot in overtime Saturday at South Florida, followed that 3 up with a scooping lay-up as he drove to the basket. That brought the Huskies to within two when A.J. Price, who had not made a basket from the floor all game, stepped up and knocked down a jumper to tie the game at 57.

"We really tried to take him out as best we could," said DePaul head coach Jerry Wainwright about Price. But he saved his one basket for a really good time."

DePaul briefly took the lead again on a Draelon Burns free-throw, but a Hasheem Thabeet score in the paint with 3:31 remaining put the Huskies in front for good.

"They [DePaul] weren't playing good, except they had a real good four or five minutes to start the second half," Calhoun said. "We did so many things shooting ourselves in the foot - give two points at halftime, just a million different things."

"We got good looks throughout the second half," Wainwright said, "but you got to shoot better against teams that are really lane-oriented and they're so powerful inside.

"They're a good team, they're playing at home and they do what good teams do - they hung in the game and made some plays down the stretch that won them the game."

Wainwright said that he feels Price has been the most valuable player in the Big East this season, but UConn's point guard scored just six points last night and turned the ball over five times. His play was a far cry from the previous nine games when he was averaging 18 points per game, so without Price as his normal self, other players filled the void - especially Thabeet.

"The big fella won the game for us far and away, it wasn't even close," Calhoun said. "His eight blocked shots, his probably 10 intimidations, his couple post moves down the stretch."

Thabeet got things going for UConn in the first half when he hit a left-handed hook shot over Wesley Green to give the Huskies the early 2-0 edge. He scored nine of his team's first 14 pionts and finished the game with 16 points and 13 rebounds.

In addition to that first left-handed hook shot, Thabeet went to his left hand two other times during the game, including on the go-ahead basket where he spun off Wesley and layed the ball in with the left.

"Today I think they checked the scouting report," Thabeet said. "Every time I go right, so they gave me the left. So I was able to be effective on that."

While they spent much of the second half playing from behind, it was quite the opposite in the first half. The Huskies had the lead for all but 47 seconds of the first 20 minutes. The half was anything but fast-paced, as the Huskies came out flat and scored just 29 points.

"I don't know what it was in the first half that we weren't playing with the same type of intensity that we've been playing with," Price, who didn't score in the first half, said.

Eight DePaul players scored in the half and the Blue Demons took their first lead of the game, 26-25, on a Dar Tucker jumper with 3:46 to go. An Adrien bucket on the ensuing possession gave UConn its lead back.

Doug Wiggins scored for the Huskies with 3:06 left to push the score to 29-26. No one would add any more points to the board for another 3:03 when Burns - who scored 20 points for the Blue Demons - hit a jumper going into halftime and made the score 29-28.

Contact Dan Olender at Daniel.Olender@UConn.edu.