The Connecticut Huskies are the 2024 NCAA Division 1 males’s basketball champions after defeating the Purdue Boilermakers 75-60 within the Championship Recreation on Monday night time.
The Huskies went into halftime with a six-point lead, however a dominant defensive efficiency early within the second half, holding Purdue to only 10 factors in over 10 minutes of play, allowed Connecticut to interrupt away. The Huskies received each sport within the match by greater than 10 factors.
That is UConn’s sixth males’s basketball title and second championship in a row. The Huskies are the primary males’s basketball group to repeat as champions because the Florida Gators in 2006 and 2007.
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Tristen Newton led the Huskies with 20 factors. Zach Edey, Purdue’s star large man, led all scorers with 37 factors.
Purdue has by no means received an NCAA males’s basketball title. Final 12 months, they turned the second ever No. 1 seed to lose within the first spherical of the NCAA match. They got here tantalizingly near matching the bounceback of the 2019 Virginia Cavaliers, who received the nationwide title after their historic loss to 16-seed UMBC in 2018.
In what was imagined to be a free-for-all on this new age of the switch portal and identify, picture and likeness offers, UConn has found out the right way to dominate.
The 2024 Huskies are the sixth group to win all six match video games by double-digit margins. They received these video games by a grand complete of 140 factors, blowing previous the earlier excessive of 121 by the 2009 North Carolina group for the very best margin amongst that unique membership.
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Cam Spencer, a switch from Rutgers, Stephon Citadel, a blue-chip freshman, and Alex Karaban, a sophomore from final 12 months’s group, spent the night time guarding the 3-point line and making life depressing for Purdue’s guards.
This was solely the second time this season Purdue did not put up 10 3-point makes an attempt. Regardless of Edey being the sport’s highest scorer, the remainder of the Boilermakers mixed solely managed 23 factors.
Edey battled gamely, ending with 10 rebounds to document his thirtieth double-double of the season. However this sport proved the quantity crunchers proper. UConn let Edey again in and again down all night time on 7-2 Donovan Clingan, giving up tough 2s in alternate for any 3s.
In the meantime, as Edey began sporting down, the Huskies took the ball proper at him. Citadel completed with 15 factors and each Spencer and Clingan had 11, and it barely mattered that UConn made solely six 3-pointers, which was proper at its season common.
Hurley joins former Florida coach Billy Donovan within the back-to-back membership, and is in firm with Invoice Self and Rick Pitino as solely the third lively coach with two championships.
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No one will say the UConn coach did not work for this one. Within the first half, he begged with, swore at typically berated the refs about over-the-backs, elbows and hip checks that weren’t referred to as.
As soon as, when that did not work after Edey set a tough (and possibly authorized) choose in opposition to Citadel, Hurley began in on Edey himself as the middle walked towards the Purdue bench for a timeout.
However the coach’s finest work got here in no matter resort room he used to attract up the sport plan.