No Longer the 'Same Old' Huskies

I give up. 

Yeah, you heard me. I give up.

I just can’t predict what is going to happen with the UConn men’s basketball team.

Author Ray Bradbury once wrote in an essay on "1984" that people always ask him to predict the future. “Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway," he wrote. "You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.”

That pretty much sums up the prediction business as it relates to this year’s UConn Huskies team.

We spent way too much time looking at what the Huskies were giving us and predicting more of the same. I know I was guilty of it, and I know many others were as well.

We knew we had Kemba, and we knew no one else on the team was consistent enough to win big games in succession – i.e., in a tournament. The victory in the Maui Invitational was nice, but Michigan State wasn’t nearly as good as we thought, and Kentucky was very young and raw back in November.

Surely if they could only finish 9-9 and ninth place in the Big East, the tournaments at the end of the year would prove to be much more difficult. In other words, more of the same was in store for Huskies fans.

It is, of course, impossible to predict the future. There are only two options, as Bradbury said. You can predict more of the same, or something unexpected can happen. Something that you can’t possibly predict.

It is why I always find the requisite question on every sports show of “Who will be a surprise this season, or this tournament?” so funny. Well, if you predict it, then it’s not a surprise, is it?

That unknown is the "better" Bradbury is referring to.

Tyler Olander going for 7 points and 5 rebounds in the first half of a Big East semifinal? Yeah, that’s better.

Jamal Coombs-McDaniel getting the biggest rebound of the year, the one that set up Kemba Walker’s game-winning shot against Pittsburgh. Uh yeah, that’s something more than expected.

UConn expertly dissecting the best zone defense in the country to the tune of 52 percent from the field in the second half against Syracuse. Not the same old UConn.

Way too often fans fall prey to expecting the same old-same old, as it were. After Friday's semifinal victory over Syracuse, Walker answered a question from Doris Burke with the comment, “Everyone sees us as the underdogs, but we don’t. We expect to win.”

Maybe we should all start expecting something different. Something better.