HARTFORD, Conn. — It’s not about chasing history now. The UConn men are in a fight to save their season, their basketball lives in 2025.

They seem to know that, though it will come down to showing it Tuesday night.

“We’ve got to play with desperation,” Liam McNeeley said. “That’s the point we’re at. It’s do or die right now. We all got to play like it. Every game. We show up for the big games, and don’t play as well for the not-as-big games. We’ve got to understand that every game is so important.”

The Huskies were still smarting from their loss at Seton Hall on Saturday, a loss that pared down their margin for error, that makes their remaining six Big East games must-win affairs, starting with this next one against Villanova Tuesday at the XL Center at 6:30 p.m. ET.

“There is a different level of focus, of being locked in,” McNeeley said, describing this quick turn-around. “I was trying to bring a lot of energy, be motivational. We need something to fire us up.”

At 17-8, 9-5 in the conference, they can’t afford any more losses to teams below them in the conference standings, or they could find themselves playing on the first day at the Big East Tournament, maybe even sweating out Selection Sunday.

For the back-to-back defending champs, it’s a sobering place to be in mid-February, a dark place.

“Some of the players who know what’s at stake here, who have been to the top of the mountain, know what that loss meant,” coach Dan Hurley said. “We’ve got to respond here, we’ve got to fight here, really, for what we’re trying to do with our season. We’ve got to fight for our lives at this point.”

Alex Karaban, determined to “use his voice” in this critical time, emerged from the locker room Saturday to call players out for not taking things as seriously as coaches do.

“You’ve got to be honest with your teammates and the people who care about this team,” he said Monday.

Hurley said he has been disappointed not to have walked into more angry, frustrated locker rooms after some of the losses.

“You would hope for more frustration as opposed to silence,” Hurley said. “That’s kids today, they’re not as comfortable expressing themselves face to face. I appreciated Alex’s comments. I’d love to walk into a locker room and have to maybe break up a fight between two players, pissed off that maybe that guy didn’t play hard enough.”

That may be going a bit far, but the Huskies need to come out with hair ablaze against Villanova, 6-7 in the league. The Wildcats, much like the Huskies, have been hard to figure out. They beat UConn earlier in the season and St. John’s last week, so they’re dangerous.

“We didn’t get the job done at Villanova,” said McNeeley, who missed that game with his ankle sprain. “It’s going to be a different story (Tuesday) night. … We’ve got to play angry, we’ve got to take our feelings and emotions out on somebody and that’s what we’re going to do.”

UConn went 5-3 while McNeeley, the freshman projected to be a top NBA pick, was out. He provided the spark, the points and the will in one of the Huskies’ signature wins, at Creighton last week, when he scored 38 points. He was bottled up at Seton Hall, and scored 10 points, hard to come by.

Sometimes, when a team looks like it is not playing with intensity, it’s really just playing tight, tentative, not driving, passing, shooting or defending with conviction. When a team can’t finish a game with a seven-point lead in the last 36 seconds of regulation, after fighting from behind on the road to take that lead; or a five-point lead with 48 seconds left in overtime; when it hesitates and flubs again and again trying to inbound the ball, it’s playing scared, afraid to lose.

McNeeley was ready to follow up Karaban’s lead in explaining the loss to the last-place Pirates.

“The whole problem with that game was not being ready to play,” McNeeley said. “You saw it from the jump. Played soft, scared, not ready to play. It was that simple.”

It’s to be expected, too, in trying to function without a point guard, that the Huskies will be unsure of themselves when handling the ball. Hassan Diarra is playing with a bad knee, and when he has had to sit Hurley has been going “position-less” rather than using freshman Ahmad Nowell or transfer Aidan Mahaney.

“It’s heavy to wear this uniform,” Hurley said. “It’s one of the heaviest to wear in college basketball. We’ve got a giant target on us based on the recent history. Some athletes take pride and thrive in the uniform, and for others it’s tougher, it’s heavier and it wears on you as opposed to bringing out the best in you.”

For holdovers who played important roles in the national championship, like Karaban, Diarra and Samson Johnson, it has historically brought out the best in them. It’s a different kind of pressure now. Sophomore Solomon Ball, who had a huge game in a big win at Marquette, McNeeley and Jaylin Stewart, have shown an ability to thrive in challenging environments, against challenging opponents.

But Hurley finds himself articulating some of the issues he had two years ago, when the Huskies lost six of eight during Big East play. He wondered then if some players who weren’t playing well or as much as they expected, didn’t have “one foot out the door.” He was wondering that again. This is a dark space, and the Huskies must find their way out of it. The season hinges on it.

“All anyone is going to remember about the year is how these guys finish it,” Hurley said. “It’d be really great if late this year, we get people who haven’t had the year they’ve wanted to this point and it’s been negative experience for them, where they can find that mental toughness to attack this last part of the season and put all that behind them. Really try to add value to the team. Players that are disappointed, or have been disappointments, can turn their season around. That’s a message we’ve tried to preach these last couple of days, ‘the season hasn’t gone well for you, so what have you got to lose at this point? Get out there and go make some shots, make some plays. And that’ll be the only thing people remember.'”

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