NEW YORK – The time for talking is over, it’s time for the Main Event at Madison Square Garden.
As thousands of fans make their way from Connecticut into Manhattan, the Huskies had a shoot-around on the Garden floor Friday morning, final tune-up for their NCAA East Regional semifinal, or Sweet 16 showdown with Iowa State. It begins at 7:27 p.m. Friday night.
“At the end of the day,” coach Kevin Ollie said, “it’s a basketball game. We’ve got to go out and win our individual battles and play collectively as a group. And understand that we’re playing a great, great basketball team in Iowa State. The farther and farther we go, the stakes rise. And it’s not all physical, it’s mental. We’ve got to have the mental aspect to it to go out and play our brand of basketball.”
The Huskies (28-8) will likely start Shabazz Napier, Ryan Boatright, DeAndre Daniels, Phil Nolan and Niels Giffey, the lineup coach Kevin Ollie began using at the start of the American Athletic Conference Tournament on March 13. UConn is 4-1 with that lineup.