UConn Huskies: Dan Hurley’s furious reaction despite 33-point lead shows why they're the defending champs

“Everything should be automatic this time of year. Just defensively. It’s human nature, I guess. But just to throttle down like that late, that’s not championship level, Hurley said during an interview at the half.

“In this tournament, if you don’t keep everything at the absolute highest level, like automatic, every possession, things go bad for you in this tournament. And so yeah, we got to grow up a little bit the last couple of minutes,” Hurley added just before leaving for the locker room to talk to his team.

Overall, there was barely anything for Hurley to be worried about. At the same time, he knows that the Huskies will be in for tougher assignments the deeper they get in the Big Dance. Everyone has a target on UConn’s back, considering that the Huskies are the overall top seed and the defending national champions.

The Huskies shot 52.9 percent from the floor versus Stetson and limited the Hatters to only 30.9 field goal percentage. UConn’s defense completely shut down the Hatters, who made just 3 of 20 attempts from deep and turned the ball over 14 times. Those numbers are par for the course for the Huskies who are No. 1 in the nation in adjusted offensive rating and 11th in adjusted defensive rating, per KenPom.

The Huskies will take a short rest before facing the No. 9 Northwestern Wildcats in the second round on Saturday.