UConn looks fresh in rout of Bucknell
Connecticut guard Kemba Walker gestures back toward the bench during the second half of the West regional second round NCAA tournament college basketball game against Bucknell. (March 17, 2011) Credit: AP
WASHINGTON -- Euphemistically, Connecticut defeated Bucknell in Thursday night's NCAA West Regional second-round game. Less politely, what UConn administered was a pillaging, plundering, ransacking, marauding 81-52 scorched-earth attack on the Patriot League champs.
The beating dispensed by UConn (27-9) was so thorough and so quickly evident that junior guard Kemba Walker -- by consensus the best player on the floor -- displayed sometimes muted glimpses of his supreme powers.
Walker scored an almost-quiet 18 points (12 in the second half), handing out a game-high 12 assists and taking eight rebounds. His teammates, meanwhile, overwhelmed Bucknell (25-9) with 49 percent field-goal accuracy and a whopping 49-23 rebound margin.
Roscoe Smith had 17 points and Jeremy Lamb 16. Mike Muscala led Bucknell with 14.
"To have Kemba, our scorer, become our instigator," UConn coach Jim Calhoun said, "it was important to get his teammates involved. And he did that as well as you can do it. We just locked down what they wanted to do on defense and had Kemba run the show."
After winning five games in five days in last week's Big East Tournament title run, if what UConn was feeling was fatigue, then all of the March Madness field should hope to contract some form of weariness. Walker, for instance, "didn't look tired at all," Bucknell senior guard Darryl Shazier said.
"The way their defense was playing," Walker said, "I knew they thought I'd be extremely aggressive and try to score. But my teammates were ready and they made shots."
Bucknell's last real glimmer of hope came when sophomore guard Bryson Johnson sank a three-point shot to close UConn's lead to 27-20 with 7:42 to play in the first half. UConn then reeled off 12 straight points and went to halftime ahead 39-22.
"It seemed like we were stuck on 20 for what seemed like two years," Bucknell coach Dave Paulsen said. "That was a really bad loss after a terrific season."
Matters got completely lopsided in the second half when Bucknell didn't score its first field goal for more than five minutes, during which time UConn pumped its lead to 57-25.
The lead reached a devastating 41 points at 73-32 with 8:27 to play as three-pointers, dunks, follow shots and slashing layups all lay waste to Bucknell, which Paulsen conceded was at a "decided disadvantage, athletically and size-wise."
In plain English, UConn pounded 'em.
