NOT PRETTY, BUT THEY'LL TAKE IT

Coach Jim Calhoun was concerned about the "how did that happen" teams.

"Like any first game, you just don't know what's going to happen," Calhoun said last Wednesday. "You're going to see scores out there and say, 'oops - how'd that happen?' I don't want us to be a 'how'd that happen' team."

In Friday night's season opener, UConn beat the College of William and Mary 75-66. The Huskies weren't a "how'd that happen" team, but based on player and coach reactions, you would have thought they were.

"I want to congratulate William and Mary for outplaying us," Calhoun said. "They did a terrific job … We weren't very good tonight. We won and we can't play like that."

The Tribe started off the game scoring the first two points on a dunk from Danny Sumner. On the ensuing possession, Kemba Walker used his speed off the dribble to attack the basket, drawing an and-one that gave the Huskies a 3-2 lead they would not give up.

With 12 minutes to play in the first half, UConn jumped out to a 19-7 lead, combining good half-court and fast-break offense with good half-court and full-court press defense.

"When you start out exactly the way you want to, textbook 19-to-7, fast break going well… You can't press your way through every game," Calhoun said. "Teams are going to throw it up to the corners, especially three-point shooting teams, so we had to get out of that. Then we just didn't play well."

Coming into the game, the Tribe had averaged more than 600 three-point attempts in each of the last three seasons while making at least 200.

In the first half, William and Mary had 31 shot attempts, 18 of which were three-pointers.

"At first we felt that we were going to run away with it; at the same time they ended up coming back, shooting more three's, outplayed us and made more shots," said Stanley Robinson. "They did what they had to do, but we got the win though."

At the end of the first half, Sumner hit a contested three-pointer at the buzzer to cut UConn's lead to six points. At half-time, Calhoun's message to his team was simple.

"He was just saying that we were playing bad and that things weren't going for us and we had a bad shooting percentage and we were getting outrebounded," Robinson said.

In the second half, the Tribe cut it to within four points with 16:35 left to play and got it to within six with 14:28 remaining. But with about 14 minutes to go and a 47-41 lead, Jerome Dyson took over. Dyson scored eight of UConn's next 12 points and recorded two assists on the other four points.

"I was just trying to spark something up, to get the team going," Dyson said. "We didn't come out with the energy that we came out with in the beginning. Nobody was talking, a lot of heads were down. In the huddles, we weren't saying much, just sitting there staring at coach and that's something we've got to get better at. Even if we are playing bad, we have to keep our energy up."

In the final 12 minutes of the game, the Tribe cut it to within five points, but was never poised to take back the lead. "We won, yeah we won, but we didn't play well at all. We kind of won off the ability we have," Dyson said. "We didn't get any offense going, we didn't execute our offense."