Some unfortunate news for former Husky Andre Drummond, who'll be out 4-6 weeks with a stress fracture in his back.

The good news: "He’ll heal,” according to Pistons team physican Ben Paolucci. “He should have no residual, in other words, he’s not going to have anything lasting.”

*** Meanwhile, UConn faces Seton Hall ("who's Herb Pope?") on Sunday as it tries to bounce back from Wednesday night's loss to St. John's at the Garden. The Huskies didn't practice Friday but will hit the floor again Saturday before taking off for Newark -- most likely sometime in the mid-to-late afternoon, depending on when the storm ends.

The Pirates are 2-8 in the Big East, but as Kevin Ollie notes, "We could easily be 2-8. We could (also) easily be with a better record than we do have."

It appears the Pirates will be without leading scorer (16.9 ppg) Fuquan Edwin for the game, according to head coach Kevin Willard. Edwin injured his ankle in the second half of the Hall's 56-46 loss at Pittsburgh Monday night. He still scored 23 points in the game.

The Pirates may also be without backup forward Brian Oliver, who averages 8 points per game. Oliver is "game-to-game," according to Willard.

A few other items from Ollie's teleconference on Friday:

"I think (Ryan Boatright) needs to attack the basket a little more. Not just him ... we all have to attack the basket more. I think the last two games, combined, we've shot 55 3-pointers."

Ollie also noted that the Huskies missed a whopping 17 layups against the Red Storm.

His somewhat cryptic "I'm going to have to make changes" quote after the St. John's game had nothing to do with tinkering with the lineup or anything like that, Ollie insisted.

“It’s a mindset change,” Ollie said. “How we start games, how we’re thinking about different things. We have to be more confident with our shot, because what we’ve been doing just hasn’t been working. It’s for me to try to change that. Hopefully, we’ll have a different start to the game (on Sunday).”

Willard on the Huskies: "I think Kevin Ollie's doing a terrific job for UConn. It just shows you what type of program they have. They've got two terrific guards playing at a high level."

Sorry folks, but I just don't see how UConn is an NCAA tournament team right now.

I don't care what Joey Brackets says. I don't care what their RPI is, or whether they (somehow) still have the nation's No. 1 strength of schedule. I don't care if the ol' "last 10 games" aren't supposed to matter much, if at all.

They should matter. The Huskies have lost nine of their last 12 games. Their only three wins over the past 1 1/2 months came against a Herb Pope-less Seton Hall, last-place DePaul and 14th-place Villanova.

It's all well and good that UConn beat Florida State back around Thanksgiving -- before Florida State was the Florida State that beat both Duke (on the road) and North Carolina in consecutive weekends. It's nice the Huskies have won at USF and at Notre Dame.

It's nice that UConn has played, in February alone, five games against Top 25 teams. The Huskies lost all five of them.

I'm sorry, but getting an NCAA tourney invite shouldn't be based beating a few good teams two months earlier, then playing a lot of really good teams and losing to all of them. There are too many hungry mid-major teams that, while perhaps not as talented, are more likely to make a better showing in the NCAA tourney than the Huskies.

UConn still, believe it or not, can play its way into the Big Dance. I'm not going to get into the scenarios of how for the 900th time, but it's still possible.

But sorry ... right now, UConn does not belong in the NCAA tournament. Not in my eyes.

*** A few revealing quotes from tonight:

A couple of players were just about speechless after the 72-70 loss to PC.
“I’m not sure,” Jeremy Lamb said as he tried to explain how the Huskies had collapsed. “It’s very frustrating. I don’t know.”

Asked why such a talented team has now lost nine of its last 12 games and fallen to 17-12 overall, 7-10 in the Big East, the normally effusive Roscoe Smith shook his head, took a long pause, and simply replied: “I don’t know. No comment, I don’t know.”

But perhaps Shabazz Napier gave the most revealing answer to UConn’s failure to put away the Friars (15-15, 4-13).

“No disrespect to them, but this is one of those games that you put a ‘W’ by it before you even play it,” the sophomore point guard said. “But they came out real hard … and they took this one away from us.”

*** Andre Drummond was hit with a technical after apparently throwing the ball back at ref Roger Ayers with too much force after Drummond had been called with an elbow foul.
“I told (Ayers), ‘It’s Andre Drummond, he doesn’t know how to do that. He’s too nice a person,’” associate head coach Geroge Blaney explained. “I can’t imagine that would be intentional. He just misread it, I don’t know.”

Drummond agreed: “I tossed it to him. I guess he wasn’t prepared for it, and he thought I tried to throw it at him. I usually just toss the ball to the ref. I guess he wasn’t looking and it looked like a cheap shot.”

But Drummond wasn’t about to use the call as an excuse.

“That’s part of the game. I’m not going to complain about the refs and how they officiate the game. They made a call.”

*** Drummond had 12 first-half points – including four alley-oop dunks, three of them in the first 3 ½ minutes – as PC had no answer for the 6-foot-10, athletic freshman.

But after a transition alley-oop dunk to start the second-half scoring, Drummond went scoreless the rest of the way.

“I think we went away from what we were doing in the first half,” Drummond said. “They also did a great job on defense. They went on a really big run, came back and took the game.”

Napier took responsibility for UConn’s inability to get the ball inside in the latter half.

“I just think I didn’t run the ball like I usually do,” he said. “It’s not Andre’s fault, I didn’t run the ball at all. When I did run the ball, Andre had open lanes, alley-oops. In the second half, I didn’t run the ball quick enough.”

*** Jim Calhoun was released from New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center on Tuesday and is back home after undergoing lower back surgery on Monday. Calhoun will recuperate at home and be monitored by his personal physician. The hope is that he will be back on the sidelines for Saturday’s regular-season finale against Pittsburgh, but it’s still too early to tell.

Jim Calhoun needed a day off yesterday. He wasn't feeling well, so he let George Blaney handle his Big East teleconference call, as well as practice.

Practice is open to the media today at 3 p.m., so we'll see if Calhoun is back and feeling better. Probably just needed a day after Wednesday's ugly loss to Georgetown, the Huskies' fourth straight setback.

UConn did get some possible "good" news yesterday when Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said power forward Herb Pope would be a game-time decision Saturday after suffering bruised ribs while diving for a loose ball in a loss to Marquette earlier this week.

Not that an injury to any player can ever qualify as good news, but the Huskies could use every advantage they can get right now.

Here are some of the grisly numbers from UConn's 75-63 loss to Seton Hall that wasn't nearly that close:

*** UConn committed 13 first-half turnovers. Just one in the second, but the damage had been done.

*** Seton Hall hit 10 of 20 3-pointers, 6 of 10 in the latter half -- including five during one four-minute stretch that pretty much salted the game away.

*** The Huskies shot just 35.1 percent from the floor, by far their worst of the season. Last time they shot worse? Last year's national championship game (34.5) -- which, you may recall, UConn won.

*** Andre Drummond and Alex Oriakhi combined for just six points. Oriakhi had just two points and two rebounds. Not sure what's going on there. Or with Roscoe Smith, for that matter.

*** Jeremy Lamb had a team-high 19 points, but none over the game's final 15 minutes.

*** Niels Giffey had 11 points -- six of them from the foul line.

*** Shabazz Napier had nearly as many turnovers (five) as points (six). Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said stopping Napier was the key going into the game.

"He really is a catalyst," Willard said of Napier. "He is a heck of a player and we knew it was tough to stop Lamb. He comes off so many screens, he's got such great range, and you kind of almost have to pick your poison. He was a much more important person to stop, because Lamb is going to get his. You have to try to stop one of them and we really tried to put two people on Napier at all times."

*** UConn's 35-22 halftime deficit was its first of the season.

*** UConn had won 11 straight over the Hall, 18 of its last 19 and 25 of its last 27.

*** George Blaney now has as many technical fouls this season as Jim Calhoun: one apiece. Funny, it takes a lot less for the refs to "T" up George than it does to get Calhoun.

Nothing against Blaney, but this is a game where the Huskies truly missed Calhoun. They still might not have won, but things would have been a lot different with his intensity on the sidelines.

*** Seton Hall's Jordan Theodore scored all 19 of his points in the second half and also finished with 11 assists and three steals. Herb Pope had 15 points and eight rebounds, Fuquan Edwin added 12 and 11 and Aaron Cosby netted 12 points.

And a few other things:

UConn fans may not care about this right now, but Willard is quite a character. He was awed by the fact that the Pirates got a postgame locker-room visit from Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz. And he didn't think his players understood the historical impact of finally beating UConn for the first time in 11 years.

“I’ve got three Europeans. They don’t know where New Jersey is," he said. "I didn’t know (about the 11-game losing streak), until I talked to (a writer) yesterday.”

Willard also called the Drummond-Pope controversy "one of the stupidest things" he's ever heard.

"Why would he know?" Willard asked. "He probably just knew who No. 15 was. That’s the way we do it. If I had told Freddie Wilson to go stop (Providence’s) Vincent Council, he’d be like, ‘Who’s that?’ We play so many games against so many great players, it’s just one of those things.”

Oh, and Seton Hall is good. I'll almost certainly be voting for them in my AP Top 25 poll on Sunday -- unless they blow it and lose at Providence (which is hardly out of the question in this wild and whacky Big East).

*** Curiously, Lamb seemed to place some of the blame of the loss on the game's officials.

“We couldn’t get (any) calls," he said afterwards.

When asked about UConn's 13 first-half turnovers, Lamb said: "Some of them we got fouled, didn’t get the call, and some of them we made bad passes. You’ve got to take care of the ball.”

Tyler Olander may have summed things up the best:

"They came back and kind of punched us in the mouth a little bit. We failed to punch back for the rest of the game, really.”

*** Jim Calhoun can return to coaching the team starting tomorrow. His first return to the sidelines will be Saturday at Rutgers.

"It’s always nice to have Coach back, because he tells us exactly what we need to do," Olander said. "He’s our leader, he’s our coach. When your leader goes down, it hurts a little bit, so it’s always good to get him back.”