BOSTON — The last coach whose team played hard against Connecticut watched the defending national champions closely.
Rick Pitino has faced and prepared for them three times, and the St. John’s coach doesn’t see an area that can be exploited.
The top-seeded Huskies might just be bulletproof.
“I don’t see any weakness,” Pitino told The Post in a phone interview on the eve of the Elite Eight. “They have to have a good shooting night and you have to have a good shooting night to beat them.”
UConn ranks first in the nation in offensive efficiency and sixth on the other end of the floor.
He is ranked eighth in rebounding margin with plus-eight per game.
He tied a program record with 34 wins and won his final nine tournament games by an average of 22.8 points.
This can overwhelm you or lock you down defensively.
The starting five all average double figures, led by the dynamic duo of Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer.
“It will take a special performance. They can play in so many different ways,” Pitino said. “Spencer is the head of the snake because he’s always moving, he always creates the pass that leads to a great shot, he always gets the offensive rebound which is the key. But then you have Newton, (Stephon) Castle and (Donovan) Clingan who are all (projected) first-round draft picks, and they’re all great in their own right.
“Then they bring in a backup center (Samson Johnson) who is as good a (backup) center as there is in college baseball, and he plays very well. Then you have (Alex) Karaban, the rest of the guys they’re bringing off the bench. This is a deadly basketball team.
A Big East assistant coach, speaking on condition of anonymity, believes two areas an opponent needs to take care of to take a chance against the Huskies are getting them off the 3-point line and protecting the defensive glass .
In their three losses, all on the road against Creighton, Kansas and Seton Hall, they shot 27.6 percent from 3-point range and were just plus-four on the glass.
Both are well below their season averages.
“Guard the 3-point line, protect the defensive glass and you can’t allow them to move the ball from one side to the other,” the coach said. “They do a lot of things with wrong moves. You can’t allow them to move the ground.
The teams that could pose the biggest threat to Connecticut’s goal of becoming the first repeat champion since Florida in 2006-07 are the ones that know the dominant Huskies best.
“If you told me which team can beat them, I would say Marquette and Creighton have the best chances,” Pitino said before his Big East opponents took the field Friday night in the Sweet 16 games. “They know them Alright. The Illinois basketball team is also very tough. Houston is certainly excellent. There are plenty of teams that can beat them, but it’s going to take someone who really understands Connecticut.
“There are so many different ways Connecticut can beat you, and if you’re Creighton or Marquette, you know every weakness and every strength of a team in the Big East. They know Connecticut.
Connecticut, which meets No. 3 Illinois in the Elite Eight on Saturday night at TD Garden, is so difficult to deal with in general, but especially without having seen them before.
The Big East assistant coach agreed with Pitino that the league’s two teams have the best shot at knocking off UConn, but that won’t be the case since Marquette and Creighton both lost in their games of the Sweet 16 Friday night.
So why are Huskies so difficult to deal with?
“Because of the speed they move,” the Big East coach said. “They are constantly moving fast, extremely fast. You can’t really see it on film. When you think you’ve saved a cut, you go to rest for a second and the next guy comes right behind him, and your guys get transferred somewhere else. And they share the ball. They are very altruistic.
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