Donovan Clingan at full strength makes the UConn defense elite

On Jan. 5, UConn men’s basketball escaped Indianapolis with a victory after allowing 81 points to Thad Matta’s Butler team. It was a low point for the UConn defense, but hardly a surprise for head coach Dan Hurley.

“We’ve been just super soft, like wet tissue, guarding dribble drive,” Hurley said a few days earlier. “Our defense has got to take a major step up from here or else we will not be contenders at anything.”

A week later, the Husky defense was sitting 41st in the KenPom efficiency rankings, a 29-spot drop from where it had opened the season.

However the Husky defense has been surging since that point, and it’s no coincidence that it’s occurring after Donovan Clingan returned to the court and recovered from an injury-riddled start to the season.

In UConn’s most recent win over Villanova, the Huskies just held Villanova to their worst eFG% of the season. Until the recent loss at Creighton, UConn hadn’t allowed an opposing team to score more than 67 points. The Huskies’ defense had moved up to as high as the 11th most efficient in the country.

A preseason foot injury slowed Clingan down at the beginning of the season, even though he played, and another injury in December forced him out for five games.

Now that he’s back, opponents are reckoning with the terror Clingan puts on their shooters.

“His ability to protect the rim is elite,” Creighton head coach Greg McDermott said on Jan. 17. “It’s not just the ones he blocks, it’s the ones you don’t take because he’s there.”

In a road win over Villanova, Hurley said he was planning to play Clingan for 20 minutes but kept him in slightly longer due to the tight game.

“We probably resemble more of a Top-5 defense, Top-10 defense at worse, when Cling Kong is in there,” Hurley said.

“It’s so much easier on defense because you know if you missed something or have a back door cut, you have a giant who’s going to block it,” sophomore forward Alex Karaban said.

After a month back, Clingan is making strides toward 100 percent health, just in time for #MARCH.

He blocked 14 shots across a recent four-game stretch and posted his first double-double of the season on Feb. 7 against Butler (18 points, 11 rebounds). He’s scored 10 or more points in four of five games since.

“The single biggest thing was just Donovan finally got four or five practices to get himself into a rhythm with cardio, players getting used to him,” Hurley said after the Jan. 28 beatdown of Xavier. “He's got no issues with his foot, his weight is back to around where it was last year, or lighter, so you can see the mobility.”

The Clingan Effect

Clingan’s defensive impact can’t be fully understood by just looking at box scores, though he does rank fourth in the Big East in blocks, and the advanced stats show that opponents take worse shots and miss more shots when he’s on the court.

On tape, his impact is also quite apparent.

The Clingan Effect was on full display when reigning Big East Player of the Year Tyler Kolek and the Marquette Golden Eagles traveled to Hartford earlier this month.

Early in the first half, Kolek and Oso Ighodaro are running one of Marquette’s most common actions. Clingan’s size and length are simultaneously taking away the shot and the pass on this pick-and-roll. The All-American is lost, can’t make a play, and is lucky to get the ball back.