Boom goes the dynamite: UConn upsets No. 2 Michigan State

Perhaps the 2010-11 Connecticut Huskies are for real.  They sure looked the part last night at the Maui Invitational, taking down No. 2 Michigan State, 70-67, in front of a packed crowd at the Lahaina Civic Center.  UConn is now 4-0 and headed for the championship game tonight against No. 9 Kentucky.

Kemba Walker. (Photo courtesy: Hartford Courant)

Kemba Walker was sensational once again: 30 points (10-19 FG, 6-7 FT), 3 rebs, 4 assts, 3 stls.  Alex Oriakhi is starting to look like a legit number two with 15 points and 17 boards.  And collectively, even as a team full of freshmen and sophomores, UConn is starting to play with the excellence that is expected of this prestigious program.

"We have Kemba Walker and Tom [Izzo] didn't," UConn head coach Jim Calhoun said. "I've had some pretty good players in my career. Kemba is developing into one of the great players and competitors."

 "We ask him to do nearly the impossible and he's producing," Calhoun continued. "Ray Allen to Rip Hamilton to all of the great UConn players. No one has made more progress than Kemba. No one has equaled the work he's done [on his game]."

You can bet Izzo noticed.

"Kemba Walker is a heck of a player. Let's face it," the MSU coach said. "He gets to the free throw line so much. I thought Kalin did a good job on him. Korie [Lucious] did a good job on him. On those 10 made buckets, he had to earn every one of them."

So how good has Kemba Walker been, exactly?  In UConn's first four games, he has already posted three 30-point games.  Only two other UConn players have put up three 30-point games in an entire season: Rip Hamilton (1999) and Ben Gordon (2004).  UConn won the national championship both seasons.

As I said a couple of days ago, the Michigan State matchup was an early test.  Prior to the game, Sports Illustrated did not even place Connecticut in its preseason 2011 bracket predictions.  Instead, we got "also considered" status right along with Southern Miss, UTEP, and (gasp!) St. John's.  That was a big slap in the face for a perennial Big East powerhouse that played Michigan State tough in the Final Four only 18 months ago.  But it's clear now that UConn deserves some national respect.  Regardless of whether they pass their second major test of the season tonight against No. 9 Kentucky, a Top-25 ranking awaits them next week.  And you know what else is great?  Most of these guys weren't around for the Josh Nochimson/Nate Miles scandal and the subsequent Calhoun fallout.  So few, if any, of those distractions are going to get in Connecticut's way.

But the best part is the fact that UConn, despite its youth and inexperience, withstood a March Madness-like frenzy in Maui's teeny little gym against one of the country's best teams led by one of the game's best coaches.  It was a physical game with lots of hard fouls and scrambling and diving, yet the Huskies found a way (perhaps thanks to Walker and Oriakhi's upbringing in the Big East School of Hard Knocks) to come out on top.  This is the type of confidence-boosting win that convinces the media, the fans, and, most importantly, the players themselves that the Huskies are contenders and not pretenders.