Place Tuesday’s convincing 29-point win in the just what the Huskies needed category.

Beating DePaul provides the UConn men’s basketball team with some momentum heading into a two-game road trip that starts at Butler on Friday, then heads to Xavier on Wednesday.

The fourth-ranked Huskies came out of the Big East game feeling good about their offense that produced 85 points despite Tristen Newton, the team’s leading scorer, going scoreless and playing without starter Donovan Clingan who’s sidelined with a foot injury.

And they feel good about their defense, which allowed less than 59 points for the first time since a 77-57 decision over Indiana on Nov. 19.

While no one would ever mistake DePaul for the Big East title contender, or even a mid-level league team, it was a performance that UConn (12-2, 2-1) can build on.

Some observations from the DePaul game and about the Huskies through 14 games:

• Coach Dan Hurley saw some encouraging signs from his defense against DePaul, which made only eight field goals in the first half and shot 35.7% overall.

But, overall, UConn’s defense hasn’t lived up to Hurley’s championship-level standards. He doesn’t care about what statistics say; UConn is allowing 63.6 points per game (2nd in the Big East) and opponents are shooting 40.1% from the field (3rd in the Big East).

“We’ve been bad defensively,” Hurley said. “... If we guard like that, we will not be a team that wins this league, regular season or conference (tournament). And we will not be a team that can make a deep run in the tournament.”

Hurley has been prioritizing working on one-on-one defense, especially on the perimeter. The loss at Seton Hall on Dec. 20, during which the Pirates regularly beat the Huskies off the dribble, served as a wakeup call.

“We’ve been just super soft, like a wet tissue guarding dribble drive. We’re doing a really bad job off the ball in ball screen defense. … Then just the toughness. An ability to win one-on-one battles. We’ve been bad individually guarding people this year.”

• Senior Hassan Diarra looks more confident shooting the ball.

He had his best offensive game this season on Tuesday, going 4-for-six from the field, including sinking a season-high three 3-pointers out of four attempts. He finished with a season-best 14 points in 19 minutes off the bench.

He raised his season field goal average to a career-best 47.3% and a jump from last season’s 44.9%. He’s made seven 3-pointers so far, three more than all of last season.

Credit the improvement to extra work that he’s putting in, especially during the holiday break.

“Just staying consistent with my work,” Diarra said. “All week long, we put the work in and got a lot of shots up. We were in the gym lifting. Credit to the staff for putting in the time with us and it came to fruition.”

Diarra also has benefitted from a change to his shooting form made during the off-season.

“He made some adjustments with his shot in the off-season to decrease some of the arc, because he was shooting a little bit of a heavy ball,” Hurley said.

• UConn is a tough team to stop when it receives balanced scoring like it did against DePaul. Six players scored at least eight points, four reached double figures.

So far this season, eight different players have reached double digits in a game, with Newton (11), Cam Spencer (11) and Alex Karaban (11) leading the way for the Big East’s highest scoring team at 83.1 points per game.

“I think it just makes our team super dangerous,” Karaban said. “Any guy can show up and it can be their game. It just makes it so hard to prep for us.”

Of course, the Huskies would prefer not having to try to win without Newton’s offensive help.

“I’m not smiling because I don’t want to see a national championship point guard have a scoreless night, but it does speak to the strength of who we are,” Hurley said. “We have a lot of guys who can beat you and balance is what creates successful teams.

“If you can’t win when your leading scorer doesn’t play well, you’re not much of a team.”

g.keefe@theday.com