DeAndre Daniels Does His Dr. J Impression, UConn Beats Harvard

Some notes, quotes and observations from UConn's 57-49 win over Harvard Friday night at Gampel. We'll have some video up later:

DeANDRE DANIELS:

(on his big night -- a career-high 23 points -- and his lingering back issues):



(on worries his lower back will continue to nag at him all season)

“If I keep playing like this, I’d like it to keep nagging me. Hopefully, it doesn’t, but we’ll see.”


(on perhaps being the third option UConn is looking for)

“I can help those guys, take the load off them. Everybody’s going to be scouting them, trying to double-team them and get them off their game. I just need to step up and get the load off their back.”

SHABAZZ NAPIER:

(on Daniels)

“He’s been working hard … he puts in the work after practice, and today it kind of showed.”

“When you start scoring and that adrenaline gets in you, unless you have serious back problems, that goes out the window.”

“We know he can score, it’s just up to him to believe he can score. His confidence level is kind of low. But I believe after today, it should be high. When the Big East comes, we have to have that guaranteed slot for our next scorer.”

(on his own six-point, nine-assist, seven-rebound, four-steal, one-turnover night)



KEVIN OLLIE:

“Great victory today. I’ll definitely take 7-2 ... Once again, this team showed their fight, showed their resiliency to come back. And our sixth man, our crowd, was unbelievable. I definitely want to praise them. I told Coach Blaney after we came out at halftime, I don’t know why they can’t get excited for this … I wanted to play. It was a terrific crowd. They got two shot-clock violations for us because they were counting down.”

(on Daniels)

“He just controlled the game. We knew we had a mismatch problem. And he showed the toughness we wanted.”

"DeAndre’s a player. He’s got to have that confidence to take it to the rim, be aggressive. That’s what we wanted him to do today. I don’t know if they thought his back was messed up or not, but he decided to play today. He’s a load on that sweet spot. Not right on the block, but on that sweet spot where he can take that one dribble. He’s so long. One time, he looked like Dr. J. He went under the rim, under the backboard and made a scoop shot. We’ll need that coming up in Big East play and after the break, because we’ve got some good teams coming in here.”

(on starting Enosch Wolf over Tyler Olander)