No. 1 UConn men’s basketball returns Donovan Clingan, rolls past No. 18 Creighton 62-48

STORRS – In its first game as the top-ranked program in the country since 2009 , the UConn men’s basketball team got its big man back and rolled past No. 18 Creighton inside a packed Gampel Pavilion on Wednesday night, 62-48.

UConn is now 42-9 all-time when holding the AP No. 1 ranking.

“You can’t lose the next game after you’re ranked first,” head coach Dan Hurley said. “We all knew that coming in. The problem was we were playing one of the best teams in the country here… We should play so hard to keep this thing right now that somebody’s got to rip it out of our lifeless body.”

Donovan Clingan made his return from the foot injury he suffered in the Dec. 20 loss to Seton Hall and UConn’s defense reaped the benefits. The Huskies forced Creighton, the best 3-point shooting team in the Big East entering Wednesday’s game, to turn the ball over 14 times and shoot just 34.6% from the field and 6 of 26 (23.1%) from deep.

Dom Amore: How UConn’s Donovan Clingan worked his way back, seized a moment

The difference came on the offensive glass, where UConn struggled in the last several games without its star big man. The Huskies missed 45 shots but grabbed 21 offensive rebounds to Creighton’s six, capitalizing with 17 second-chance points.

“We’re an effort rebounding team. We get there with quickness and life or death pursuit,” Hurley said. “The scene under the basket didn’t turn into like a tag-team wrestling match or a UFC cage fight. We were able to get off bodies and just go and get the ball. We had a really brutal film session the last couple games, in particular the last one where we challenged the manhood of these guys and the warrior spirit.

“We didn’t like being embarrassed the way we’ve been on the backboard. And the boys responded.”

Tristen Newton led three scorers in double-figures as he finished with 15 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Alex Karaban and Cam Spencer added 13 points each with seven and six rebounds, respectively. Hassan Diarra, coming up big in his role yet again, had five points, six rebounds and a steal off the bench.

Clingan finished with six points on 3 of 8 shooting, five rebounds, two assists and two blocks. UConn was plus-nine on the scoreboard in his 16 minutes off the bench.

“It felt good just to go out there and battle with the guys in front of the home crowd just to get that win. This was a big one for us and it felt great,” Clingan said, referencing the sold-out crowd that wore white and enjoyed the $2 Miller Lite promotion.

Ryan Kalkbrenner had 11 points and eight rebounds for the Bluejays while Baylor Scheierman added 12 and six. Trey Alexander shot just 3 of 12 from the field and had six points.

“I think we were just locked-in personnel-wise,” Karaban said. “…Everyone was locked in defensively, offensively we shared and we created for each other. We really just were a lot tougher than we had been in previous games.”

Newton erased his shooting struggles of late with back-to-back “backbreaking,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said, 3s in the first half; his second tied the game at 12 before Clingan checked in at the 11:42 mark. The impact of the big man was immediately clear, diverting Creighton from the lane and providing a much-needed boost around the rim.

Newton and Spencer combined for 21 of UConn’s first 23 points, making 8 of their first 11 shots from the field and 3 of 4 from deep. Spencer made three difficult shots in a row, including a 3-pointer while being fouled, and the Huskies sprinted to a 14-2 run during Clingan’s initial three-minute stint to gain a 23-14 advantage.

Creighton immediately got five points back after Clingan checked out, forcing Hurley to call timeout and bring the sophomore star back into the game after just three minutes on the bench. He denied a layup attempt from Alexander, sending the ball into the front row, two possessions later.

Stephon Castle, who didn’t shoot it well but played critical defense against Scheierman, pulled off a sweet spin move and made a layup through contact and Diarra took the Huskies into the half up 32-21 with a three-point play.

UConn came out in the second half with a 9-2 run as Karaban converted back-to-back layups for his first points of the night. Castle hit a 3-pointer with the shot clock winding down and Newton cut through the defense for a layup to extend the lead to 18.

The gap grew to as many as 22 points around the seven-minute mark, through Creighton cut it to 10 with two and a half minutes to go and forced UConn to seal the game at the free throw line.

“When you get ranked No. 1, coached talked about it the entire week, it’s a temporary belt,” Karaban said. “So you’ve got to continue to protect the belt, protect the heavyweight championship. Every week it’s always going to be a battle, two games, three games a week. So you’ve got to protect the No. 1 ranking, especially in the first one. You can’t lose the first one with the ranking.

“I think we really just played UConn basketball and I think that was really our best overall game the entire year.”

The Huskies (16-2, 6-1 Big East) head to Villanova for an 8 p.m. game on Saturday.