UConn's Thabeet took a beating in Pittsburgh game

No doubt, even fans of the Big Ten and ACC have circled March 7 on their TV calendar to see how Thabeet performs when he’s Pitt-ed against Blair in the rematch in the Panthers’ lair.

STORRS – After losing Jerome Dyson for the season a week ago, and then losing to Pittsburgh Monday night, Coach Jim Calhoun’s troops return to the winter war that is the Big East this season when they host South Florida on Saturday afternoon.

“All the [post-season] goals we set for ourselves before the season are all still viable,” Calhoun said Friday as his team prepared for the USF game.

Against Pittsburgh, the Huskies lost their most recent battle in a game that at times resembled armed combat – especially when Pittsburgh’s resident hulk, DeJuan Blair, somehow became entangled with Hasheem Thabeet’s right arm and flipped the lanky center over his back while both players were fighting for a rebound.

That has to be the one most astonishingly memorable, non-scoring basketball play this writer has seen in five decades of hoop watching – an over-the-back body slam that would make even the most seasoned professional wrestling choreographer proud. (If you haven’t seen it, Google “Thabeet’s arm” on YouTube.)

Talk about getting penalized for a reaching-in foul. I’m sure the UConn center will be wary in the future about getting his right hand sandwiched between the ball and the opposing rebounder, even though most opposing rebounders don’t have 265 pounds of mostly muscle firmly packed onto a 6-foot-7 frame.

No doubt, even fans of the Big Ten and ACC have circled March 7 on their TV calendar to see how Thabeet performs when he’s Pitt-ed against Blair in the rematch in the Panthers’ lair.

“Hasheem gets a pass for Monday’s game to some degree, because of the foul situation he was in,” Calhoun said.

But despite a consensus bad fourth-foul call, Thabeet must get off the floor – literally and figuratively – and rebound from what had to be an embarrassing situation witnessed by a packed house in the XL Center and a national TV audience on ESPN.

Against Pittsburgh, “we didn’t have our best game,” Thabeet said after Friday’s practice back at UConn’s Gampel Pavilion, during which his floor time was about a third less than usual. “The next game, we’ll go out there and do all those little things we didn’t do” in Monday’s game.

In fact, the entire squad has to rebound from that Pitt loss, and a good way to start would be to start rebounding, something UConn didn’t do that well, as they were out-rebounded 48 to 31 en route to their second loss of the season.

“I thought the key to the game was, simply put, rebounding,” Pittsburgh head coach Jamie Dixon said as he prepared to leave Hartford tied with UConn in the Big East loss column with two. “I never thought we could win by that many [76-68], but Thabeet being in foul trouble was key.”

Thabeet shouldn’t have any trouble – foul or otherwise – against a South Florida team that’s playing sub-.500 ball, although they did manage to beat another Top Ten team earlier this month, upending Marquette, 57-56, in Tampa.

That upset was just about as bullish as the Bulls are going to get this season. Don’t think coach Calhoun is going to let his team lose back-to-back league games. Look for USF to leave Connecticut Saturday night still looking for their first-ever win against the Huskies, having lost all six previous meetings between the two teams.

“This team is 24 and two and I think somewhere (pause) in Husky mania, hysteria, whatever you want to call it, we lose sight of the fact we’re having a pretty good season,” Calhoun said Friday after practice, filing away the Pitt loss for future use as a means of motivating his squad.

“When the season’s over, that’s when you decide who the great players are,” he said.

The Feb. 21 game at 2 p.m. at the XL Center in Hartford is scheduled to be televised on MyTV9 and SNYT.

[Editor's note: Vito Leo joins us as the new UConn basketball writer for HTNP.com]

for more details: http://mansfield.htnp.com/sports/02202009_uconn_mens_b-ball_vs_

pittsburgh.html