How UConn freshman Jaylin Stewart earned trust of coaches, teammates ahead of return home to Seattle
Jaylin Stewart might’ve earned himself some additional minutes for when he returns home with the UConn men’s basketball team to face seventh-ranked Gonzaga in Seattle this week.
The freshman out of Garfield High, just a 15-minute ride from where Friday’s game will be played at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, impressed his coaches and his teammates as he made his first three shots from the field during a five-minute stretch in the first half and finished with seven points, two rebounds and an assist over a season-high 14 minutes as the Huskies trounced Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Saturday, 101-63.
“I’m super happy for him, he deserves it. He played one (heck) of a game for us today,” said Alex Karaban, who scored a career-high 26 points on 9 of 12 shooting, 6 of 9 from 3-point range, with seven rebounds and three assists.
Karaban, the starter ahead of Stewart at the four and a unanimous selection to last year’s Big East all-freshman team, needed just 22 minutes to produce Saturday’s stat line, one of the most efficient offensive performances of his career. He was called for two fouls early which led to Stewart’s early stretch. About a minute after he came in, Stewart converted on a layup and then used a clean head-fake to create a midrange jumper, he made a layup through contact and converted a three-point play on the Huskies’ next possession.
“He does it all the time in practice, we see him being aggressive in practice, just confident and making tough moves, so just to see that happen in the game is awesome and getting momentum for him going into Seattle, his hometown,” Karaban said. “Just super excited for him and he’s always going to continue to get better and I think he’ll just do great things continuing in the season.”
Stewart is averaging 3.1 points in 9.5 minutes per game on the year. He didn’t play in the loss at Kansas or in the win over North Carolina, games when the Huskies needed as much experience on the court as they could get, and didn’t make a shot from the field in limited time against Mississippi Valley State, Indiana, Texas or New Hampshire.
But he will be an important piece off the bench, “someone we can go to and get Alex off the court before we run him into the ground,” Dan Hurley said, as the Huskies get into Big East play.
With Stephon Castle back from his knee injury, UConn’s regular rotation has consisted of eight players – Solo Ball, Hassan Diarra and Samson Johnson off the bench, though Ball has started as Castle works his way back. Stewart and freshman classmate Jayden Ross are top candidates to provide even more depth off the bench.
“We want to get to nine, and I’ve been able to get to 10 in my career, but you play the players that are ready to play,” Hurley said Friday, before Stewart stepped up in Saturday’s win. “Those two guys (Stewart and Ross) are tremendous talents, I think they’ve both got a chance to be NBA players. It’s not happening to them right now, they’ve got to keep developing and showing up every day and don’t take the text messages and the phone calls from people that want to start talking to you about the (transfer) portal – which starts to happen this time of year as the tampering starts.”
Already? For Stewart and Ross, both four-star, top-100 recruits, Hurley says “it’s never too early for tampering and for the creatures that come out.”
“Those two guys are gonna be great players here. They’re obviously in a program that’s proven itself to develop players real well and to win big things, so just want them to stay with us and keep working because they both can help us short term and then obviously long term,” Hurley said. “They’re players that could potentially be leading teams here. But you’ve got to earn it here and you’ve got to develop here because this program is – we’re at a certain level right now.”
Disappointment on the glass
UConn finished Saturday’s game with a 42-28 rebounding advantage and, through 10 games, has the fifth-best rebound margin in the country (plus-13 per game). But in the first half, in which Arkansas Pine Bluff kept the game close, the Golden Lions collected 20 rebounds over UConn’s 17 and had nine on the offensive end to the Huskies’ five.
“That was total (expletive),” Hurley said. “Our centers got beat, Donovan (Clingan) and Samson there, that was disappointing.”
Rebounds aren’t always about height, but it definitely makes a difference. Pine Bluff’s tallest starter, forward Ismael Plet, is only 6-foot-8, six inches shorter than Clingan, two shorter than Johnson. He had four rebounds in the first half, Clingan had three, Johnson had none.
“We were running to backs instead of getting inside position. Rebounding is… it’s position, it’s tracking, it’s tracing, it’s life or death pursuit of the ball. Possession of the ball is the most important thing,” Hurley said. “They were faster to the ball. Some of them were long 3s that sometimes it doesn’t bounce your way but I just thought that Samson and Donovan, we’ve got to rebound it better there. And they know that, I got on them.”
The rebounding improved as UConn ran away with the game in the second half. The Huskies had a 25-8 advantage on the boards in the second, 9-2 on the offensive end. Six different Huskies finished with at least four rebounds.
