Memphis, Tenn. — UConn was demolished and demoralized by a tidal wave of superior talent, experience and depth on Friday.

Coach Dan Hurley called it the "perfect storm."

The Huskies suffered the program's most lopsided league tournament loss ever and second worst postseason defeat in Friday's American Athletic Conference tournament quarterfinal at FedExForum.

The ugly final: Houston 84, UConn 45.

"Crushing, crushing loss," Hurley said. "Perfect storm out there. Playing obviously an incredible team, deep, incredibly well-coached. ... We were probably at our worst offensively, which had obviously something to do with the level of defense that they play and depth and everything.

"A really tough way to end a year where we felt like we were making progress. Now several, several months to stew over this and what happened."

Basically, top-seeded and 11th-ranked Houston happened.

The Cougars (30-2) are everything that the Huskies want to be. They played hard to rigt to the final basket in assuring UConn (16-17) a losing record for the third straight season.

Ninth-seeded UConn never led, trailing by as many as 40 points. The Huskies scored a season-low for points and shot an icy 25.9 percent (14-for-54), the second lowest mark in program history according to records that date back to 1980.

It was a rough way for Hurley's first season to end. The result just reinforced that there's no quick fix.

"It was just a humbling reminder of how far we have to go, both from a recruitment, development standpoint, and it's going to take some time," Hurley said. "We've known where we're at, now far we have to go. We want to get to the level Houston's at. That's a Final Four contending program, championship-caliber program. That's where UConn is used to being. We just saw how far the distance is we have to go."

UConn gave up a four-point play to start the game, quickly trailed by 11 and then cut the gap to 18-16 before Houston sped away. Down 39-25 at half, the game really got away from the Huskies in the second half.

"We wanted to come out in the second half and be ultra, ultra aggressive in everything," Houston coach Kelvin Sampson.

Mission accomplished.

In an emotional moment, Hurley removed senior Jalen Adams for the last time with 51 seconds left. Adams finished his career by scoring 15 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. He ended up with 1,706 career points, just five shy of setting the AAC career scoring record.

"Jalen meant a lot to the team," sophomore Josh Carlton said. "He's going to be missed by everybody on the team. You hate to see a guy like that go out the way he did in his last game. You want to send him off better."

Carlton, who had a breakout season, was the only other Husky to score in double figures, finishing with 13 points and 11 rebounds.

That was about it for the Huskies.

Carlton and Adams accounted for 10 of the team's season low 14 field goals. Starters Tyler Polley, Christian Vital and Tarin Smith combined to go 3-for-23 from the field and score nine total points.

After converting a season-high 13 3-pointers in Thursday's opening round win over South Florida, the Huskies went a dreadful 3 for 26 from beyond the arc.

"That's a pack of wolves, one through 10," Hurley said of Houston. "No let-up. They play with incredible confidence, toughness, joy. The depth, they just kept coming."

As you might expect, the mood was somber after the game. The Huskies will lose Adams, their leading scorer, as well as Smith, Eric Cobb and Kassoum Yakwe, who missed nearly the entire season with a foot injury.

Redshirt sophomore Alterique Gilbert will be back and hopefully healthy. He stayed in Storrs this week recovering from a concussion and eye injury that forced him to miss the last three games.

Even if UConn had Gilbert, the team's heartbeat, it wouldn't have mattered Friday.

The Huskies are far from ready to compete on an elite level.

No one knows that better than Hurley, who'll be out recruiting early next week to add to his incoming class.

"The team is going to use this last game as a learning experience and this whole year in general," Vital said. "We didn't make the progress that we wanted to make because we wanted to be playing still. The progress that we made, I don't think anyone really expected much of us as a team. ... A lot of guy stepped up throughout the year."

g.keefe@theday.com