UConn Chin Series

A breakdown of UConn's go-to set plays.

Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.

Over the weekend, the UConn Huskies wrapped up their first outright Big East title since 1999. Dan Hurley’s team currently sits at second in the kenpom rankings — with an adjusted offensive efficiency that is fourth in the country behind only Alabama, Purdue, and Illinois.

I wrote earlier in the season that UConn is my favorite offense to watch and dissect. That hasn’t changed lately. The Huskies are still a pleasure to watch with their combination of elaborate set plays and great ball movement.

In today’s newsletter, the focus is on the UConn “Chin” series.

If you’re unfamiliar with that term, let’s first take a look at an example of a chin screen being set by Alex Karaban and used by Cam Spencer.

Like most chin action, the play starts out with a dribble handoff and a ball reversal. Then, Spencer runs towards the basket off of Karaban’s back/chin screen.

This is the only time all season where I found UConn scoring directly off the chin screen. Usually, the screen is used to set up subsequent action — and the Huskies have a lot of subsequent action. They use chin action to set up:

• Zoom for Tristen Newton

• Logo ball screen for Stephon Castle

• Baseline Runner for Cam Spencer

• Stagger with Alex Karaban

• Spain ball screen for Donovan Clingan/Samson Johnson

For the rest of the newsletter, we’ll go through those actions one-by-one.