Shabazz Napier scored 22 points in the 2014 national championship game. Ryan Boatright scored 14. Put the second number beside the first, and UConn's title begins to look more like the work of a team.
Connecticut beat Kentucky 60-54 on April 7. Its championship report also credits Napier with six rebounds and three assists. He was central to the result, and he had another guard supplying nearly a quarter of UConn's points in the final.
A tournament with one leading man is easy to remember. That version becomes less useful when it reduces everyone else to the people standing nearby in the photograph. Boatright's contribution survives a quick look at the scoring. The rest of UConn's run deserves the same courtesy.
Napier's responsibility had a history
UConn's archived player biography describes Napier as a junior co-captain who averaged 17.1 points and 4.6 assists in 2012-13. The following season, he started all 40 games and averaged 18 points and 4.9 assists. He had an established workload before the championship tournament began.
The assists interest me alongside the points. A leading scorer has to decide which opportunities to use and which to send elsewhere. An assist average cannot tell us whether every decision was good. It does establish that creating scores for teammates belonged to Napier's regular contribution.
He also averaged 5.9 rebounds as a senior, second on the team according to the biography. A description that stops at scoring guard leaves out possessions he helped finish at the other end.
Daniels had a semifinal to win
The university's 2014 draft account gives DeAndre Daniels his part of the season. He averaged 13.1 points and six rebounds, with 54 blocks. Against Florida in the national semifinal, he reached 20 points and 10 rebounds. UConn needed to win that game before Napier could play Kentucky for the championship.
That order sounds obvious until a title story treats the final as the entire tournament. A different player carried much of the scoring and rebounding work on the previous Saturday. Napier could remain UConn's leading scorer while Daniels delivered the performance that helped it reach Monday.
Daniels and Napier both heard their names called in the June draft. Charlotte selected Napier at No. 24 and traded his rights to Miami. Toronto selected Daniels at No. 37. Those selections followed two individual careers out of the same successful team.
A reader studying UConn's current basketball program should keep the dates separate. The 2014 roster is history, while today's roster presents different players and jobs. The lasting basketball question is how a team's leading player and its other major contributors fit together.
Kentucky kept the final competitive
UConn never trailed in the championship game. The official report says Kentucky cut the deficit to one with 8:13 left. A comfortable account of senior poise defeating youth has to survive that point in the actual game.
Napier and Boatright helped UConn finish, and Kentucky was a capable opponent. The report credits James Young with 20 points for the Wildcats. Kentucky missed 11 free throws while UConn made all 10 of its attempts. The six-point final margin leaves room for both UConn's execution and Kentucky's missed chances.
One championship cannot establish that every team should recruit the same ages or distribute responsibility in the same way. It does give us a specific case worth discussing. UConn had a senior guard ready to lead, a junior guard who scored 14 in the final and a forward who had scored 20 in the semifinal.
Our Pitino and Hurley debate considers how returning guards and changing frontcourts might affect a later UConn team. That is a different season and coaching question. The connection is the need to account for who does each part of the work.
CBR's NaVorro Bowman Jr. commitment story begins another discussion about a guard joining the program. Before projecting a future title around any one recruit, I would want to know the surrounding jobs as well as his own.
Against Kentucky, Boatright supplied 14 points beside Napier's 22. Two nights earlier, Daniels had reached 20 points and 10 rebounds against Florida. UConn needed both performances to finish the tournament.
