Team beats Purdue by 15 points in NCAA basketball championship match
Take one guess who finished off a romp through college basketball again. You bet, it’s UConn — a team built to win now, and often, and by a lot every time it takes the court.
UConn was efficient on offense but won this with defense. The Huskies limited the country’s second-best 3-point shooting team to a mere seven shots behind the arc and only a single make, while happily allowing 7-foot-4 AP Player of the Year Zach Edey to go for 37 points on 25 shot attempts. The 2024 Huskies are the sixth team to win all six tournament games by double-digit margins. They won those games by a grand total of 140 points, blowing past the 1996 Kentucky team, which won its six by 129.
Cam Spencer, a transfer from Rutgers, Stephon Castle, a blue-chip freshman, and Alex Karaban, a sophomore from last year’s team, spent the night guarding the 3-point line and making life miserable for Purdue’s guards. How serious was Hurley about defending the perimeter? When Braden Smith wiggled loose for a semi-open look to make Purdue’s first 3 of the game with 2:17 left in the first half, the coach bolted onto the floor and called timeout.“Coaches made a point that we’d be really locked in if we controlled their 3-point attempts,” Spencer said. “Holding them to seven shows we were locked in on making sure their guards didn’t get involved in the game.
Once, when that didn’t work after Edey set a hard pick against Castle, Hurley started in on Edey himself as the center walked toward the Purdue bench for a timeout.“The whole game plan was no Smith, no Loyer, no Jones, no Gillis,” Hurley said, as he ticked off the last names of the Purdue guards. “We knew if we keep them below 18, 20 points as a group, and they had no chance to win, no matter how well Zach played.
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