The Daily Campus

Issue date: 12/2/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Ryan Sayers Kemba Walker goes for a layup during last night's game against Delaware State.

Delaware State came into Monday's game against No. 2 UConn with the intention of slowing the pace and executing in the half-court.

UConn came in with the intention of pressing and speeding the game up. Something had to give - and it did.

The Huskies (7-0) employed a full-court press from the opening tip and turned 13 first-half Delaware State (1-9) turnovers into 18 points en route to a 44-18 halftime lead that they would not relinquish. Though sloppy at times in the second half, the Huskies cruised to a 79-49 victory Monday night at Gampel Pavilion.

"I like defensively what we did in the first half," said coach Jim Calhoun. "We just had letdown periods in the second half … it's a difficult game to play in when you're up 25 and the team runs the shot-clock for 28 seconds."

Calhoun also noted that without UConn's suffocating ball pressure in the first half, the Huskies would have been lucky to score 30 points instead of the 44 that they put up.

Offensively, UConn benefited from a balanced scoring attack that saw four players - Jeff Adrien, Hasheem Thabeet, Gavin Edwards and Jerome Dyson - reach double-figures. Edwards led the way with a career-high 17 points.

"He has that energy coming off the bench," Dyson said. "He's always running the floor, he always has so much enthusiasm coming off the bench. He just likes to play."

Thabeet scored 10 points, six of which came off dunks and four off free throws. Thabeet has not scored a field goal that wasn't a dunk in his past two games. The 7-foot-3 junior also pulled down a career-high 17 rebounds and dominated an undersized team -Delaware State's tallest player was just 6-foot-7 - that was without its leading rebounder, Arturo Dubois.

Delaware State kept itself in the game early on-the Hornets trailed by three points eight minutes into first half-behind the outside shooting of 6-foot-4 senior shooting guard Donald Johnson, who nailed four 3-pointers and totaled 16 points in the opening period.

Johnson wasn't done there. On Delaware State's first possession of the second half, he buried another open 3-pointer, prompting Calhoun to burn a timeout, which he spent standing on the court with his back faced to his team.

Continued...

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