BOSTON — The last coach whose team played Connecticut tough has watched the defending national champions closely.
Rick Pitino faced and prepared for them three times, and the St. John’s coach doesn’t see an area that can be exploited.
The top-seeded Huskies just may be bulletproof.
“I don’t see a weakness,” Pitino told The Post in a phone interview on the eve of the Elite Eight. “They have to have an off shooting night and you have to have a great shooting night to beat them.”
UConn ranks first in the nation in offensive efficiency and sixth on the other end of the floor.
It is ranked eighth in rebounding margin at plus-eight per game.
It has equaled a program record with 34 wins and has won its last nine tournament games by an average of 22.8 points.
It can outscore you or lock you down defensively.
The starting five all average in double figures, led by the dynamic backcourt duo of Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer.
“It’s going to take a special performance. They can play in so many different ways,” Pitino said. “Spencer’s the head of the snake, because he’s always in motion, he’s always creating the pass that leads to a great shot, he’s always getting the offensive rebound that’s key. But then you got Newton and [Stephon] Castle and [Donovan] Clingan who are all [projected] first-round draft choices, and they’re all tremendous in their own right.
“Then they bring in a backup center [Samson Johnson] who is as good as a [backup] center as there is in college baseball, and he’s playing great. Then you have [Alex] Karaban, the rest of the guys they bring off the bench. They’re a lethal basketball team.”
A Big East assistant coach, speaking on condition of anonymity, feels that two areas that an opponent has to take care of to have a shot against the Huskies is to run them off the 3-point line and protect the defensive glass.
In their three losses, all on the road against Creighton, Kansas and Seton Hall, they shot 27.6 percent from 3-point range and were only plus-four on the glass.
Both are well lower than their season averages.
“Guard the 3-point line, protect the defensive glass and you can’t allow them to move the ball from side to side,” the coach said. “They do a lot of stuff with false movement. You can’t allow them to move the floor.”
The teams that might be the biggest threat to Connecticut’s goal of becoming the first repeat champion since Florida in 2006-07, are the ones most familiar with the dominant Huskies.
“If you said to me what team can possibly beat them, I would say Marquette and Creighton have the best chance,” Pitino said before his Big East foes took the court Friday night in Sweet 16 games. “They know them very well. The Illinois basketball team is really tough, too. Certainly Houston’s excellent. There’s a lot of teams out there that can beat them, but it’s going to take someone who really understands Connecticut.
“There’s so many different ways that Connecticut can beat you, and if you’re Creighton or Marquette, you know every weakness and strength a team has in the Big East. They know Connecticut.”
Connecticut, which meets No. 3 Illinois in the Elite Eight on Saturday night at TD Garden, is that hard to deal with in general, but particularly without having seen them before.
The Big East assistant coach agreed with Pitino in that the league’s two teams have the best shot to knock off UConn, but that won’t be the case as Marquette and Creighton both lost in their Sweet 16 games on Friday night.
So, why are the Huskies so tough to deal with?
“Because of the speed in which they move,” the Big East coach said. “They’re constantly moving fast, extremely fast. You can’t really see it on film. When you think you’ve guarded one cut, you go to rest for a second and the next dude is coming right behind him, and your guys are somewhere else relocated. And they share the ball. They’re very unselfish.”
