He wants to get a little bigger and a little stronger with each passing day, learn about the new basketball language and culture as quickly as possible, and go on the path of integrating directly into a program with a group of people he only recently got to know.
future goals?
Newton, standing at Worth Center Wednesday after Summer Husky Workout Sessiongeared toward the surrounding larger-than-life slogans of the show’s greats, from Ray Allen to Kemba Walker and beyond.
“I look at these walls every day—all Americans, all lottery picks,” Newton said. “And I want to be there someday.”
The son of a professional military man, Newton lived all over the country, was born in Florida, and raised in Kentucky, California and El Paso, Texas, where he scored in Burgess High 3,266 points. After three seasons in East Carolina, he quickly moved through the transfer gate and ended up at Storrs working for the latter part of his career under Ocon coach Dan Hurley’s staff. Newton has two years of NCAA eligibility.
“Tristen is the kind of goalkeeper I enjoy training,” Hurley said. “Hardworker. It can record and it can create. He feels really good and college basketball would see the best version of him. He has resources at his disposal as to what he can do, physically, in the weight room and become a better athlete, to become a stronger athlete. College basketball is seeing his best version of the year.”
Last year’s edition was dominant. Newton’s goalkeeper, who is 6-foot-5, averaged 17.7 pointsfive assists, 4.8 rebounds and 34.8 minutes for the East Carolina (15-15) in his selection as the All-American Athletic Conference’s first-team player.
At UConn, Newton is expected to be the team’s primary goalkeeper who will be flexible in how he operates, often taking a one-in-a-four-outside approach to attack that, Hurley hopes, will turn up several playmakers with the ball on the periphery.
Two other transport guards — Virginia Tech’s Nahim Allen and Texas A&M’s Hassan Diarra — are expected to rotate around the perimeter. New shooting guard Jordan Hawkins is expected to thrive — “we obviously bet very hard on that,” Hurley said — and junior goalkeeper/striker Andre Jackson is a do-it-all UConn player who will need to improve his game.
Newton will lead much of what the team does.
“It’s what we expected,” Hurley said. “He’s a great kid on top of that too. Gateway is like speed dating in a way. You don’t always know, exactly, if a kid can be exactly the way you want a person to be. So I think we’re thrilled that he’s also the good guy, The cohabitable person you want.
“Smart. You have to bring in smart guys, as diversions. They have to be able to learn a new system and also have the most intelligence to fit into a team and treat themselves in the right way — to be able to humble themselves sometimes and listen, and also feel like taking what you want.” Wants.”
Newton fired 43.5 percent from the field, 33.3 percent on three-pointers and 87.9 percent on free throws last season. He averaged 8.7 points as a sophomore in 2020-21 and 11 points as a freshman in 2019-20, when UConn lit up to a season 25 high in the second-to-last game of the season, winning Husky 84-63.
“When Kimani introduced him as a candidate at the gate, I didn’t remember him right away, per se,” Hurley said of Newton’s hiring process that began with associate director Kimani Young. “I remember someone killed us in that game. Then they give you the biography and the clips and – yeah, that’s the guy we got so much trouble with.”
East Carolina coach Joe Dooley was fired shortly after the season and Newton decided to move.
“On the first day, I entered the gate probably at 11:30,” Newtown said. “I was on the phone until 10:30 at night. It was kind of crazy. But I narrowed it down really fast and knew I wanted to come here. So I made my first visit, loved what I saw and knew it fit right in.”
“A few calls, I knew they were just looking at the gate and saw the numbers. I knew they didn’t really care, they didn’t really look. Some coaches called me and they didn’t even know where I came from. [Hurley] I knew where you came from. He knew a lot about me.”
Newton is the Packers’ cousin who is backing down from Aaron Jones and his brother, former Ravens linebacker Alvin Jones, who now plays for the Saskatchewan Ruggers in the Canadian Football League. Newton’s older brother, Joan, spent two seasons in Evansville before announcing last month that he was moving to southern Illinois.
College basketball in the era of new beginnings. Newton said the pace of the style in which UConn plays and the general pace of practice is a bit of a mod. It’s more difficult. With that, he wanted to be challenged.
“In ECU, I was good,” he said. “I feel like here, I could be a lot better with actual player development and a lot of interested coaches, a lot of work in the gym.”
Jackson was the first UConn player to contact Newton as the transfer was over.
Once he saw that my visit was scheduled… he wanted to get into the gym the same night I got into town,” said Newton, ECU’s chief business officer who is reconsidering his academic path at UConn. “I love it about him and the rest of the team. The work ethic is crazy. They will push me too. … The team we are building, I feel we are going to be one of the best teams in the country.”