On UConn’s second trip down the floor, it became apparent that the Andre Jackson the Huskies had been waiting for was about to arrive at Gampel Pavilion.
Jackson had made the defensive rebound and R.J. Cole found him in the right corner. After missing 15 of the 17 shots he took from that range as freshman, and the only 3-pointer he tried in the first two games of 2021-22, Jackson launched this one with confidence, as if he’d been working all spring and summer to take and make this shot.
“I was happy it went in,” Jackson said. “It was more about just shooting it, seeing it go up. It definitely gave me more confidence that it went in but I’m just happy I put it up. It definitely freed me up.”
He took it, he made it, and if the crowd didn’t immediately grasp that this was not just another made three, they couldn’t have mistaken this Andre Jackson for the one they’ve seen.
“The way that he was just all over the court,” coach Dan Hurley said, “that’s his super power. He’s got rare athletic gifts. He’s by far the best athlete I’ve ever coach, speed, quickness, above the rim. Now, if he throws in a couple of threes …”
Jackson, the sophomore Hurley has long been touting as a “freakish athlete” was on Wednesday night the Alpha Dog the post-James Bouknight Huskies will need to show up again and again.
On a night when several of UConn’s components were short-circuiting at the start, Jackson kept the Huskies close for the first 10 minutes, then helped them pull away from LIU, 93-40.
“That’s how I have to play every day,” Jackson said. “I’ve got to learn to be the same guy every day and not have days when I’m lackadaisical and not aggressive. Coach liked the energy I played with, every day I’m going to try to bring that.”
Jackson scored 14 points, on 5-for-7 shooting, with five rebounds, an assist, two steals and three blocks, one coming out of nowhere on an alley-oop pass in the second half, not something you see from a 6-foot-6 wing very often.
Three games, three fairly easy victories for the UConn men, but each has offered its own set of data on how this could be a special season. The first game was the Adama Sanogo show vs. Central Connecticut, the second brought the off-the-bench break-throughs from Akok Akok and Jalen Gaffney as Jackson couldn’t manage a field goal.
This game brought the defense Hurley has been anticipating would bottle up Sanogo, who got into foul trouble and managed 11 points. Jackson scored in double figures for the first time as a Husky and he did it in the first half.
It was easy to forget during Jackson’s freshman season that he was a top recruiting priority for Hurley and his staff the first time they assembled in Storrs, and they persisted to pull him out from Syracuse’s backyard, Amsterdam, N.Y.
A knee injury prevented him from hitting the ground running when he got to Storrs, and the COVID-marred season of 2020-21 was not one for a freshman to easily acclimate to the college game. A fractured wrist cost him more time.
There were flashes, a windmill dunk here, a block there, but Jackson’s first season averages, 2.7 points, 2.9 rebounds, were nothing special. His 2-for-17 shooting in threes was special, not in a good way.
With seniors back for more eligibility and a top-tier freshman class coming in, Jackson has been under ever more pressure to show what his coaches saw him in. In a program culture in which players get in the gym early and stay late, he stood above all summer, especially in terms of time working on his shooting.
But he was strangely shy to pull the trigger in the first two games. His one attempt against Central rattled in and out, he passed up others but had a decent game with nine points and six rebounds. Against Coppin State, he again passed on open threes, but rather than mope he helped the Huskies by getting nine rebounds.
After the game, he texted with assistant coach Luke Murray, and the conversation was about focus, intensity.
“He just told me I had to be better all around,” Jackson said. “I had rebounds, but I had to be a bigger presence on defense, bring more ball pressure, be more disruptive. I took thad advice and tried to bring it to practice and into the game and it worked for me. Finding my identity on the defensive end is what the coaches have been pushing me to do every day.”
On Wednesday night, for the first time, he put it altogether. With UConn sluggish, he hit a second 3-pointer with 11:14 left in the half to tie the game at 12, and then he looked for long stretches like the most dynamic player on the floor.
Like the player UConn believed they were getting the weekend visit in which Jackson he flipped to become a Husky.
“You hitch your wagons to these guys you believe in,” Hurley said, “you know you have guys like James leaving early and you have to have your program, class by class, loaded with players. That was like, what we hoped Andre would be. I think he’s capable of more, too.”
Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com