UConn again girds for grueling tournament

WASHINGTON -- Another day, another tournament game for UConn. From back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back Big East skirmishes, UConn Thursday night takes up the NCAA gauntlet--potentially six games over three weekends in locations from here to Anaheim to Houston.

But feeling rested, its players insist.

"People forget," UConn sophomore Alex Oriakhi said Wednesday. "AAU, you know, when you're 14, 15, you play three games in a day. So five games in a week was not that bad. I think I'm refreshed. I think the whole team's refreshed. We just had practice, went hard, so fatigue's not really going to be a factor."

Except, as UConn coach Jim Calhoun noted, "I've seen a lot of AAU games. Those weren't AAU games. They were a long, long way from AAU games. Trust me."

What UConn pulled off in New York last week, with victories on five consecutive dates -- four of them over Top 25 teams -- necessarily colors its entrance into this larger madness of March. It helps that UConn, 26-9 and seeded No. 3 in the NCAA's West Regional, first will be matched against Bucknell, whose existence in the lower-echelon Patriot League casts it as a decided underdog despite its 25-8 record. "Bottom line," Calhoun said of the unlikely Big East title run, "is that to get here is a great accomplishment. Enhanced competition doesn't necessarily enhance the probability of getting to Houston. It does enhance your confidence."

Junior guard Kemba Walker, whose repeat rock-star performances last week somehow turned the rest of the league's best into a collection of garage bands, assured that he and his team "just love the pressure. We want to go out swinging and fighting." Furthermore, "the feeling has definitely returned to my legs" after all that running around at Madison Square Garden.

Still, Calhoun "cut back a little bit" on practice routines since Saturday night's conference championship game. "Be crazy not to," he said, after what he described as experiencing something akin to "Groundhog Day. You get up, have breakfast, go play a game, come back, chalk talk, repeat the same . . . "

If the demands of that daily grind somehow rendered UConn vulnerable to an upset, "we sure wouldn't mind it," Bucknell's sophomore center Mike Muscala said. "But I don't think we're counting on it that way."

Nor is Bucknell banking on lightning striking twice in this matchup of No. 3 and 14 seeds. The last time Bucknell was No. 14, in the 2005 NCAAs, it shocked No. 3 Kansas by a point "and put Bucknell on the map," Muscala said.

"Everybody has been harping on that," said Bucknell senior swingman G.W. Boon, who is the team's third-leading scorer in a reserve role. "I talked to the star of that team, Charles Lee, a few weeks ago. He said, 'You guys will be compared to that team, but make your own legacy.' So that's what we're here to do."

Calhoun fretted that Bucknell, 23-2 since Dec. 1, "doesn't know how to lose." Except that UConn has hit on this tireless routine: Get up, have breakfast, win a game, come back, chalk talk, repeat the same . . .