New York — The clock had turned past midnight by the time Kevin Ollie walked in the Madison Square Garden interview room early Wednesday morning.

The Jimmy V Classic game ended about 45 minutes earlier.

Ollie took longer than usual to emerge from the UConn men's basketball locker room. The head coach had plenty of talking points to discuss with his Huskies following another spotty performance.

UConn lacked the three E's, energy, effort and execution, necessary to beat sixth-ranked Maryland. They played without any sense of urgency until falling behind by 20.

The predictable result was a 76-66 loss and another lost opportunity for the Huskies to improve their resume. The scoring output represented a season-low for points.

It's been a troubling trend for the Huskies, who've fallen behind by double digits in the first half in each of the last three games and rallied to win just once against an over-matched Sacred Heart University. They cut a 21-point deficit to one before losing by three to Gonzaga and fought back to within three against Maryland before fading.

"We've just got to get better as a team," Ollie said. "We've got to be more aggressive and play like we played in the second half and we've got to start the game like that. And that takes everybody playing at 100 percent, playing hard, being tough, getting rebounds, making cuts hard, talking to each other and encouraging each other and challenging each other. It all goes hand-in-hand.

"We'll do it. We've got to do it, because no one is going to feel sorry for us. ... Hopefully, our guys continue to learn and feel this pain and get better from the pain. Hopefully, we have some more purpose when we go out and play Ohio State Saturday."

Until they solve their issues, they'll continue to struggle to defeat quality teams. Ohio State (4-4) visits Storrs on Saturday for a noon game at Gampel Pavilion.

The Huskies (5-3) are 1-3 in their last four games.

"We've just got to continue to fight and we're going to do that," Ollie said. "In failure, that's where you learn the most about yourself and your team. And we're learning some things and we've got to correct them very shortly getting us ready for conference play and for a couple of games that we've got coming up."

Right now, the Huskies just simply aren't good enough to beat a top-10 team. They aren't consistent enough on both ends of the court.

They're not tough enough, as being manhandled on the boards by a decisive 45-24 margin indicates. They need to rebound better in order to fast break, which generated only two points against Maryland. It was an encouraging sign that junior Amida Brimah had seven rebounds in just 18 minutes.

"We're supposed to be a team that can fast break but you can't fast break when you don't get any rebounds," Ollie said. "We've just got to do a better job in some of the toughness areas and I think our guys will as we go through the season."

They're also not aggressive enough, a contributing factor to their prolonged lapses and limited trips to the free throws (only 12 attempts compared to 29 for Maryland).

UConn's bench, a strength earlier this season, was a non-factor on Tuesday with the exception of freshman Jalen Adams, who had four points, three rebounds, two assists and two steals in a career-best 26 minutes and helped the Huskies play at a faster tempo. The other reserves combined for two points and zero rebounds in 28 minutes. Maryland held a 24-6 edge in bench points.

But Adams also showed his youth by making three turnovers and committing a foul in the final few minutes.

Ollie didn't exactly distinguish himself during his postgame remarks.

He preaches to his players to be accountable for their actions but downplayed losing his cool and earning a momentum-killing technical foul after UConn roared back to within three with 2 minutes, 44 seconds left. It was an uncharacteristic reaction.

The good news, it's still early in the season.

Ollie is fond of saying he wants to be the best team in March. The Huskies have the ingredients to be an NCAA tournament team.

Their struggles aren't entirely unexpected. They're incorporating four new players into the rotation, including veteran transfers Sterling Gibbs and Shonn Miller into the lineup. Gibbs and Miller are both feeling their way into their roles. They each had 12 points on Tuesday but could have been more productive.

"Those two players have got to be more aggressive," Ollie said. "Those guys are going to have vital roles for us."

One positive is that sophomore Daniel Hamilton is emerging as this team's next star. He carried the Huskies for stretches against Maryland and finished with a team-high 23 points and took a season-high 19 shots.

He also might be part of the solution to another problem.

The Huskies aren't making winning plays in tight games like Syracuse, Gonzaga and Maryland did against them. They failed in that category last season, going 2-6 in games decided by four points or fewer and ended up missing out on the NCAA tournament.

They've yet to win a close game this season, dropping two three-point decisions.

Four nonconference games remaining before American Athletic Conference play begins to polish their rough edges.

g.keefe@theday.com

Twitter: @GavinKeefe