UConn Men’s Insider: At Midterm, Huskies Seek Better Grades In Chemistry

PALO ALTO, Calif. This is sports' chicken-or-egg argument. Does chemistry create winning, or does winning create chemistry. Or, as more modern fans would ask: "Does chemistry even exist?"

It's hard to deny that, if a coach and his players do believe in chemistry, it exists for them - and at UConn, it's a word Kevin Ollie and the players use a lot. They play a sport that involves working closely together on the court, much more intricately than a pitcher and his outfielders work together. And unlike pro basketball, there is no possibility of 12 players leaving the arena in 12 cabs. For the most part, these players live together.

"I think chemistry creates winning," Ryan Boatright was saying this week, with UConn on another long road trip, to Oklahoma, California and back home. "You can win a lot of games and still not necessarily like your teammates, it's just because you're all extremely talented. But if you're not extremely talented and you don't have that chemistry, you cannot win those games. But if you're not as talented, but you've got chemistry, you can win a lot of tough games."

Chemistry comes in odd forms. Last season, it looked at times as if the Huskies did not have it at all, especially when Boatright and Shabazz Napier wouldbe barking at each other on the court. But when it meant most, it worked.

"These are the two best guards in the back court in the nation," an emotional DeAndre Daniels said at the podium in Texas after the championship. "Throughout the season, guys kept saying, these two right here are not good, they don't play good together, they're not friends ... and here they are."

The year after a championship, chemistry can be harder to build the outside world assumes it's there when it may not be. During the Cowboys' championship era in the early 1990s, coach Jimmy Johnson, who had a degree in psychology, theorized before throngs of reporters at two Super Bowls that championship teams come apart because the key figures fight over credit.

There's the saying, "it's amazing what you can accomplish when no one cares who gets the credit," a quote attributed to President Harry S. Truman that's been recycled often by coaches.

So we come to the 2014-15 Huskies and the strange brew we have seen so far. The Huskies (9-6) have, at times, shown exactly the kind of on-court chemistry they showed down the stretch last season: mental toughness, unselfishness, all the good stuff. Other times, not so much.

"You don't really see the flaws in chemistry until you lose," Boatright said. "We won the first three games, so we had no problems. Once you start losing, that's when everything comes to the fore. We took those losses and we're in a better place now."

That was said the day before the abysmal loss to Tulsa on Tuesday, where things came apart again.

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UConn Men's Insider: At Midterm, Huskies Seek Better Grades In Chemistry