Greetings from Day 2 in NYC for the 2K Sports Classic. UConn faces Indiana and former recruiting target Noah Vonleh tonight. The game won't likely start until about 7:30 p.m.

UConn last faced Indiana on Jan. 26, 2008, a 68-63 victory at Assembly Hall that actually nearly brought Jim Calhoun to tears. The Huskies were down two key players (Jerome Dyson and Doug Wiggins) who were suspended after having been arrested a night or two earlier for underage drinking, but still pulled out a gutsy victory.

Wiggins returned soon after, but Dyson allegedly flunked a drug test and was gone for another month. I'll never forget when Calhoun & Co. walked into the team hotel to meet with the media the night before, we were informed that there were "no legalities involved" with Dyson and Wiggins.

Well ...

Still, it was a stirring victory, one that really had you start believing the Huskies could be better than expected that season. They wound up returning to the NCAA tournament after a one-year absence, though got bopped in the first round by San Diego.

UConn had lost to the Hoosiers the prior season, 77-73 in Hartford. I wasn't on the beat yet, but I'm told Calhoun was in rare form after that loss.

The Huskies are 5-3 all-time against Indiana.

*** In today's JV game, Washington squares off against BC. Washington features Mike Anderson, a Hartford native. Anderson, a 6-foot-4 junior guard, was an all-league player at Weaver High in 2009. He subsequently played at Taag Academy in Tampa in 2010, spent a year red-shirting at Iowa Western CC, transferred to Lincoln Trail College in Illinois before ending up at Moberly C.C. in Missouri. At Moberly last year, he averaged 17.2 points and 10 rebounds per game and was the No. 47 JUCO player in the country, according to jucorecruiting.com.

Anderson will get the chance to play his hometown team on Dec. 22, when UConn heads out to Seattle to face Washington in a battle of Huskies.

They now call it "The Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball." I remember when they used to call it "40 Minutes of Hell."

Whatever you want to call it, it's what Mike Anderson employs at Arkansas, where he was once a longtime assistant to Nolan Richardson (including the Razorbacks' 1994 national championship squad). It means pressure, pressure and more pressure, lots of run-and-gun and, often, high-scoring affairs.

Of course, Anderson was employing this style with Missouri the past five seasons, including in 2009 when the Tigers went up against UConn in the Elite Eight in Glendale, Ariz. The result: an 82-75 Husky victory in what was Kemba Walker's coming-out party (23 points in 25 minutes).

Jim Calhoun says he's watched tape of that game to help prepare for Saturday's SEC-Big East Challenge battle with Anderson's Razorbacks. Ryan Boatright is certainly up for the challenge.

“That’s how I’ve played my whole life, because I’m so small, I’ve got to use my speed to my advantage,” the diminutive frosh guard said. “I love when a team wants to come out and press us like that.”

The Huskies expect to throw a lot of three-guard looks at Arkansas, meaning Boatright, Shabazz Napier and Jeremy Lamb could be sharing the court a lot on Saturday.

That's fine with Boatright, too.

“We can hit you from every angle, it’s hard to stay in front of all three of us," he said. "And the chemistry we’ve all got, we play so well with each other. I think that comes from the preseason and us understanding what we all want to do, and that’s win. It’s fun playing with those guys.”

Boatright's season debut was certainly impressive Saturday in the Bahamas. Now comes his debut on the "mainland." He said sitting out six games (plus two exhibitions) for receiving improper benefits was frustrating.

“I wasn’t expecting eight games,” he admitted. “The little thing I was in trouble for, I was expecting maybe three or four, five at the most. It came out to be eight. But I’m just happy I got to come back quick enough to help my team in the Bahamas.”

Calhoun said that Boatright, Niels Giffey and Roscoe Smith have been the team's best players in practice the past few days.

A few other tidbits:

*** Calhoun looks for his team to get three defensive stops in a row at least five times a game. He says that when the Huskies did so last season, they went 18-0.

*** Frosh Michael Bradley could being practicing with the team by next week.

*** Arkansas is led by guards Julysses Nobles (12.2 ppg) and Mardracus Wade (10.8) but suffered a tough loss when one of their top returning players, junior forward Marshawn Powell, suffered a season-ending knee injury a few weeks ago.

*** Calhoun says his team isn't "fully connected yet," but concedes few, if any, teams in the nation are right now. He believes No. 1 Kentucky is easily the best team he's seen thus far.

*** The obligatory what's-up-with-Alex-Oriakhi update: “He’s always a hard worker, he was in late last night shooting. I don’t worry about his attitude, I worry about his confidence. He’s not a particularly over-confident kid," Calhoun said.

*** SEC, easy as 1-2-3: The Huskies are 15-5 against the SEC under Jim Calhoun, including 3-0 last season. They’ll also play at Tennessee on Jan. 21.

*** Tell Larry Lucchino & Co. that Calhoun, a huge Red Sox fan, is very much on board with the Bobby Valentine hire.