Dan Hurley ejected as late run from UConn men comes up short in costly 68-62 loss at Marquette

MILWAUKEE – The UConn men’s basketball team saw its chance at a share of a record 12th Big East championship go by the wayside in Fiserv Forum on Saturday as it was upset in its regular-season finale at Marquette, 68-62.

Silas Demary Jr. had a chance to tie the game as he attacked the rim in the final seconds and was met with full-body contact from Marquette center Ben Gold, but no foul was called. With one second on the clock, coach Dan Hurley was immediately ejected from the game for making contact with official John Gaffney.

Marquette put the game away with four straight free throws.

“I didn’t think I bumped the ref,” Hurley said after the game. “If John (Gaffney, the ref in question) thinks I bumped him, then he’ll say that I bumped him. But I don’t think that I bumped the official. I think I yelled into the back of his head, ‘Foul! Foul!’

“Listen, the officiating for us, it is what it is in this league. I’m not gonna comment on that … It was obviously a culmination of how you felt like things went, and then your frustration with your team and the frustration with not winning what you pursued for four months.”

The Huskies did themselves in with 16 turnovers – the eighth time this season that they’ve given the ball away at least 15 times – and they couldn’t make up for the wasted possessions in their least efficient offensive game of the season, shooting just 35.6% from the field and a mere 14.3% (3-for-24) from 3-point range.

“(Saturday) was a great example of what our floor is as a team,” said center Tarris Reed Jr., who scored 10 of his 16 points in the first half and grabbed 10 rebounds for his ninth double-double of the year. “What we did wasn’t acceptable. We had a championship on the line and we came up short.”

The loss handed St. John’s its second consecutive outright regular-season title.

UConn, falling to 27-4 and 17-3 in Big East play, is already locked in as the No. 2 seed in the upcoming conference tournament and will play a quarterfinal on Thursday night at 7. After spending most of the season in the league’s basement, Marquette could be seeded as high as No. 7 at 12-19 on the year and 7-13 in conference play.

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Reed got off to a dominant start as the Huskies opened up a 9-5 lead, but they got sloppy with eight turnovers in the first half, including six during a six-minute stretch without a made field goal. The Golden Eagles, shooting 54.5% from the field before the break, capitalized with a 10-2 scoring run and took their first lead on a tough three-point play from conference freshman of the year candidate Nigel James (19 points, seven assists).

“Some of the things that have cost us the whole year from being a really, really, really elite team. The 16 turnovers were really bad, and then just our inability to play elite level defense, and then you mix in having a shooting night from excellent shooters where you just miss. Tough one,” Hurley said.

The Huskies’ sharpshooting duo of Solo Ball and Braylon Mullins combined to shoot just 6-for-25 from the field and 3-for-17 from beyond the arc. They were the only Huskies to make a 3-pointer as Alex Karaban missed five attempts from deep and went without a made field goal for the first time in his career.

“They keyed on certain things with the zone, they made it tougher to get it to Tarris, they keyed in on AK, and the ball found Braylon and Solo for a lot of good 3s. Just, they didn’t make them,” Hurley said.

Demary (17 points, eight rebounds) took it upon himself and attacked the rim to end the string of misses and help the Huskies’ lead grow to as many as eight points in the first half.

But it dwindled to just two at halftime after seven-consecutive points from Adrien Stevens and a mid-range jumper from James that beat the buzzer.

Marquette didn’t have the same trouble from beyond the arc after both teams went just 5-for-24 in their first meeting at Gampel Pavilion. Royce Parham started a personal 8-0 run with back-to-back triples and James later connected from the corner to make it an eight-point UConn deficit with 10 minutes to play. Chase Ross made a pair of his own before Mullins finally saw one fall at the five-minute mark.

The second-worst 3-point shooting team in the Big East at just 31.8% on the year, the Golden Eagles went 8-for-21 from beyond the arc on Saturday.

Demary and Ball helped the Huskies hang around from the free throw line in the last four minutes and Jayden Ross made it a four-point game with a putback at the 1:22 mark. Reed, a 55% free throw shooter on the season, went 2-for-2 from the line and cut the deficit to two with 43.7 seconds left.

The Huskies were able to get a stop and Ross grabbed the defensive rebound with 13 seconds left to start the final possession. He fed the ball to Demary for the game-deciding play.

“I just tried to get down hill, make a play. Clock was running down, had no timeouts, so I tried to get something at the rim and if it hit off the rim, try to let somebody get an offensive rebound or something. Just tried to make a quick play at the rim,” Demary said, declining to comment on whether he felt he was fouled. “I just play the game and let the refs do what they do.”

It isn’t clear whether Hurley will face punishment from the league as a result of his ejection.

“Again, you can screenshot whatever you want to screenshot, I don’t feel like I made any contact with John. I don’t believe I did,” Hurley said. “If I get disciplined for being ejected from a game – I mean, I don’t know. Did (Kansas coach) Bill Self get disciplined for getting ejected (Tuesday night)? I’ve been ejected before and I’ve been back out there. It’s not my first rodeo.”

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