The Huskies got a lot of “2x champs!” hype last year and couldn’t live up to it. Seems like they deserve it this year, tho…..
Team: Connecticut Huskies
2024-25 Record: 24-11, 14-6 Big East
2024-25 Big East Finish: Third, one game behind Creighton and one game in front of a fourth place tie between Xavier and Marquette.
Final Computer Rankings
NET: #30
KenPom.com: #32
BartTorvik.com: #33
Postseason? UConn beat Villanova in the Big East tournament quarterfinals, but lost to Creighton, 71-62, in the semifinals. They earned a #8 seed in the NCAA tournament and beat Oklahoma before losing to eventual national champion Florida by just two points in the Round of 32.
Key Departures: The big one is obviously Liam McNeeley, who was the #29 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and is off to the Charlotte Hornets. The freshman ultimately squeaked out the team scoring title here, averaging 14.5 points per game and he was pretty good elsewhere too: 6.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists. He probably could have had a bigger impact on the Huskies if he had shot better than 31.7% behind the three-point line, but McNeeley did connect on over 35% of his threes in the 12 Big East regular season games he played in after missing eight with an injury.
The Huskies will also be dealing with the loss of two starters alongside McNeeley in Hassan Diarra and Samson Johnson. Diarra had the team lead in assists at 5.7 per game and added 3.7 rebounds to go with 7.7 points a night. Johnson was the starting center on the floor for UConn, although he ultimately averaged less than 20 minutes per game and put up just 7.5 points and 3.5 rebounds to go with his 1.5 blocks per game.
It was the final year of eligibility for both of those two, so they qualify as an expected loss. From a certain point of view, Aidan Mahaney’s transfer to UC Santa Barbara is not unexpected. He started UConn’s first five games of the season before losing that starting job to Diarra the rest of the way when it started to become clear that This Just Wasn’t Working For Anyone. He ended up averaging 12.4 minutes per game, which is still Rotation Guy stuff, but once he left the starting lineup, that minutes average dipped to just under 11 per game, which is really barely over the limit of Rotation Guy.
Key Returners: The three-headed monster of Solo Ball, Alex Karaban, and Tarris Reed have UConn set up pretty well heading into next season. Ball is the guy who lost out on the team scoring title to Liam McNeeley by just 0.1 points per game, 14.5 to 14.4. Karaban was 0.1 per game right behind Ball, which made for a nice little trio of activity. You can do a lot worse than starting your roster prep off with “well, we’ll probably get 30 points a night from Ball and Karaban,” and that point becomes more emphatic if Karaban rediscovers his shooting touch. After knocking in 40% of his threes as a freshman and just barely under 38% as a sophomore (and 43% in Big East action!), Karaban was at just 34.7% this past season overall and a kind of actually bad 31.6% against conference foes. Oh, I haven’t actually mentioned Tarris Reed yet. Reed averaged just under 20 minutes a game, almost always coming off the bench to relieve Samson Johnson. He averaged 9.6 points and a team high 7.3 rebounds per game, and he made great use of the extra 35 pounds of size he had on Johnson when he subbed into a game. Not quite a Thunder & Lightning combination, but you get the idea.
Before we move on: Since the start of Big East play his freshman year, Solo Ball is shooting over 41% from behind the arc. In 40 Big East regular season games, he’s splashing triples at a 42.5% clip. I would like to officially recommend to the group that he be renamed Triple Ball. Thank you for your consideration on this matter.
I don’t think that Jaylin Stewart or Jayden Ross are ticketed to get into the starting lineup this coming season, but they were both rotation caliber guys as sophomores this past season. Stewart was the bigger contributor at 5.4 points and 2.4 rebounds in nearly 18 minutes a night, and he connected on over 36% of his threes, too. Jayden Ross only averaged 11.4 minutes per game, so his counting stats weren’t that not, but he played in 33 of 35 games. If he wants to see his minutes go up — and they were trailing off after February 1, if we’re being honest — then he’s going to have to do better than shooting 10-for-45 (22%) on threes as a 6’7” wing.
Key Additions: UConn has gone in two different directions with their incoming freshmen. They have two guys coming in who have to at least be entertaining thoughts of being one-and-done, as well as two guys who are clearly more development pieces. Braylon Mullins (6’5”, 190 lb. guard) is 247 Sports’ #15 prospect in the Class of 2025, while Eric Reibe (7’0”, 230 lb center) isn’t that far behind him in the Composite rankings at #28. Mullins is, at least by recruiting ranking, the pick as Preseason Big East Freshman of the Year, and Reibe’s the second best prospect coming into the league. I don’t think either one is guaranteed to start on opening night given everything else in UConn’s rotation, but there’s clearly a way for both of them to be in the rotation right away.
I don’t want to be entirely dismissive of Jacob Furphy (6’6”, 210 lb guard) as an addition here. I think anyone in the top 150 could/should be a rotation contributor as a freshman, and he’s at #128 in the 247 Sports Composite. It’s just that he’s probably the coaching staff’s #10 priority in terms of the rotation at best, and maybe that means he’s not going to do all that much right away. For the record: No relation to Pacers guard Johnny Furphy, apparently.
From the looks of things, UConn brought in one transfer who’s tickets for a starting spot, another who’s obviously an immediate rotation guy at worst, and two lottery tickets. Malachi Smith (6’0”, 175 lb. guard) is the obvious starter after averaging 10.4 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 5.3 assists for Dayton last season. He was in Ohio for four years, but missed all but the first seven minutes of the 2023-24 season with an injury, so this will be his only season in Storrs. He’s a career 39% three-point shooter, and you might remember him from hanging 11 assists on Marquette last season.
Speaking of Things Guys Did Against Marquette Last Year, anyone remember Silas Demary (6’5”, 195 lb. guard)? You might not, because he was at Georgia for the past two seasons, and if you didn’t pay for a month of FloSports, you missed MU’s game against the Bulldogs. Demary has started 69 of 70 appearances so far in D1 hoops, and he averaged 13.5 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.7 steals per game last year. He also committed eight of Georgia’s 18 turnovers in that game in the Bahamas. Still, obvious rotation guy at worst, maybe even a starter depending on how the Huskies put together their 1-2-3 spots.
Dwayne Koroma (6’8”, 205 lb. forward) is still in college basketball on the Diego Pavia “Junior College Years Don’t Count” exception, mixing in one JuCo year in with stops at Iona, UT-Arlington, and Le Moyne. He had a nice year for the Dolphins last year at 11.5 points and 7.2 rebounds per game, but he’s not a shooter at just 11-for-33 in his D1 career. Alec Millender (6’1”, 185 lb. guard) is also only going to be in Storrs for one season. He had a nice first year in Division 1 at IU Indy after four years (with a COVID season and an injury redshirt) at Wayne State in D2, averaging 8.2 points and 3.7 assists and hitting over 43% of his triples. Does that translate from the Horizon League to the Big East immediately? No idea, but I like that he’s taking a swing at it.
Coach: Dan Hurley, entering his seventh season with Connecticut and 15th season as a Division 1 head coach. He has a record of 165-69 with the Huskies and 316-174 overall.
Outlook: I see the vision. Three proven commodities in the starting lineup and two rotation guys returning. Two obvious proven Division 1 players coming in as transfers. Two top 30 freshmen, plus at least one more who could at least fight for playing time. A two-time national championship winning coach. That’s an obvious recipe for success in today’s college basketball landscape. The starting point for conversation about UConn going into the 2025-26 season has to be “everyone understands why a neutral party would pick them to win the Big East.”
This is different than last year. Last year Alex Karaban was their only returning starter. There were questions about whether or not Hassan Diarra, Samson Johnson, and Solo Ball were prepared to step into the spotlight. There was no guarantee that Liam McNeeley or Aidan Mahaney were going to work out for the Huskies.
And yet, everyone seemed prepared to install UConn with a chance to win a third straight national championship….. right up until they crashed and burned in the Maui Invitational. They got their legs back underneath them, and started out Big East play 4-0…. but a 6-6 run after that, including losses to Villanova and Seton Hall and a season sweep against St. John’s led to UConn dropping out of the AP top 25 completely.
They were still a tournament team, clearly, earning an 8 seed and beating Oklahoma to win their 13th straight NCAA tournament game. But that’s all they were, big picture: A perfectly decent if not slightly flawed top 40 team.
There are fewer question marks going into this season. CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish has the Huskies at #5 in his top 25 and 1. BartTorvik.com has them at #11 in the computer’s preseason rankings. This is very similar to where UConn was last year when people were maaaaaaybe giving them a bit of a free pass because of two straight titles. This doesn’t feel like the same thing this time around. This feels like taking a proper assessment of where the Huskies stand on the national stage. I like the projection of this team as a national championship contender where I didn’t quite get it last year.
Could things go sideways? Sure! But last year felt like “hey, wait, why does everyone love this team” and then it went sideways. This preseason praise feels much more justified, but hey: You gotta still play the games. For example: It’s probably in UConn’s best interest if they return to playing like a top 50 defense like they did in Dan Hurley’s first four NCAA tournament appearances with the Huskies. Last year? Just #75 on KenPom.com at the end of the season, and that was probably a lot of their problem relative to not living up to the hype.
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