What’s that? You UConn players are tired after playing three hours and 46 minutes of basketball? Pathetic. You know who’s ready to go another six rounds? Your coach, Jim Calhoun, who was his always chipper self in the postgame press conference:
↵↵⇥“I’m not exhausted. The players are probably exhausted. I’m not. I could practice right now. Foul shooting, probably.” ↵⇥↵Foul shooting might be a good place to start -- the Huskies were 24-42 from the line. But I don’t know, it seems like Calhoun should give his players a little more credit. Sure, it was a loss, but they fought through six overtimes. I’d imagine that deserves some sort of pat on the back. Then again, Calhoun seems like the type who would elbow his own mother in the ribs for a rebound, so I guess that would be asking a bit much. ↵↵⇥“It’s a loss,” he said when asked to put the game’s magnitude into context with his career. “I’m sure in the summertime I’ll look back and say what a historic battle it was. Right now, it’s a loss. There’s no other way.” ↵⇥
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↵Calhoun didn’t focus his negativity just on the game, however. He had plenty to say about all those Big East haters out there (Note: I’m yet to find anyone who thinks the Big East is anything but great), the choicest of which was this: ↵
↵↵⇥“Can I make one statement? I keep hearing the fact the Big East is not as powerful as everybody thinks we are because we don’t have Notre Dame and possibly Providence going into the tournament. […] ↵⇥↵I’m no mathematician, but the reason that the Big East is getting seven teams in the Tournament instead of 10 is not because Notre Dame, Providence and Georgetown couldn’t win 15 conference games each. Or because, as Calhoun points out with N.D., they played ranked opponents consecutively. It’s because those teams, for the most part, couldn’t consistently beat the unranked opponents -- the teams they’re supposed to beat. G’Town and Providence each had six losses to team’s that won’t finish in the top 25; Notre Dame, who admittedly had an incredibly tough schedule in January, lost to three that won’t finish ranked. ↵
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↵⇥“After being through this, and this is my final Big East say, the idea that this is not a great, great, and maybe the greatest conference for one year ever is ludicrous. Someone just do some simple math to truly understand. When Georgetown got caught in the washer in the rinse cycle and the same thing that happened to Notre Dame, you played five straight top-20 teams. Try that on for size. So they don’t seem to understand the fact the math can’t work out, they’re not going to have 10 teams with 15-3 records.” ↵
↵But I’ll digress; we all know how much Jim Calhoun hates being questioned. ↵
↵This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.