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TAMPA - In one of USF's best seasons in more than a decade, the men's basketball team sent the senior class out on the right foot, as the Bulls defeated Connecticut, 75-68, Saturday afternoon in the Sun Dome to secure the No. 9 seed in the 2010 BIG EAST Championship presented by New York Life.

With the win, the Bulls will face DePaul at noon on Tuesday in the first game of the tournament at Madison Square Garden.

The victory was USF's first-career win over UConn in the eighth all-time meeeting between the two schools as the Bulls ended the regular season 19-11 overall and 9-9 in conference play. It marks the best record since 2001-02 when the Bulls played in the NIT and went 19-13 overall.

UConn fell to 17-14 overall and 7-11 in BIG EAST play.

Junior guard Dominique Jones led all scorers with 20 points while three other Bulls added double-digit scoring in sophomore Augustus Gilchrist (17), senior Mike Mercer (12) and senior Chris Howard (11).

Howard handed out five assists, while Mercer led all players with eight rebounds. 

The Bulls hit 27-of-53 (50.9 percent) from the field and 17-of-21 (81.0 percent) from the free throw line, while UConn was 30-of-63 (47.6 percent) but only shot 6-of-8 from the free throw line.

The Huskies were led by Kemba Walker, who was the only player in double figures with 18. Walker also added six rebounds, four assists and three steals, while Ater Majok posted six points, six board and six blocks.

Neither team held any sort of advantage throughout the first half, as USF's five-point lead at 7:49 was the largest of that first stanza for either team.

The Bulls came out and made the extra pass early on, getting seven assists on their first eight baskets, but only getting the lead up to three after Mercer hit a jumper at the 13:42 mark for an 11-8 lead.

Junior Jarrid Famous gave the Bulls their largest lead of the first half with a layup at 7:49 that put USF up by five at 22-17.

A couple minutes later, Jones finally hit his first shot of the game with 5:30 to go that put USF back into the lead at 24-23.

Jones hit a layup with 45 seconds left for the final scoring of the first half as USF went into the break holding a 33-31 lead. A back-and-forth first half saw 11 lead changes all together.

As tight as the first half was, the Bulls did not let the same thing happen in the second, as USF went on a 12-1 run to open the second stanza that all of a sudden put UConn into a 13-point hole at 45-32 with just 16:04 left.

Huskies head coach Jim Calhoun called a timeout after Mercer's tip-in capped that 12-1 run, UConn's second 30-second timeout of the half.

UConn finally stopped the bleeding with back-to-back buckets, but the nine-point deficit was as close as the Huskies would get for a good portion of the second half.

With the crowd already into the game after USF built up the double-digit lead, Jones gave the fans even more to cheer about when he flew in from the right side and threw down a tomahawk dunk that ignited the crowd and put the score at 52-40 at the 12:34 mark.

USF got its biggest lead of the night a little more than two minutes later when Gilchrist hit a jumper with 10:13 left to put USF up by 14 at 56-42. But just when USF looked to have the game in control, UConn stormed back, going on a 10-1 run over a four-minute span as the Huskies found themselves down by just four, 62-58, following a pair of free throws by Darius Smith with 4:25 remaining.

The teams traded the next six baskets before Howard sank a pair of free throws with just over a minute remaining that made it 70-64, but Walker would hit a jumper and Toarlyn Fitzpatrick turned the ball over on the next possession as UConn continued to rally.

Alex Oriakhi slammed home a dunk with 36 seconds to go after grabbing an offensive rebound, and UConn called a timeout immediately afterwards down by just two at 70-68.

But Howard hit a pair of free throws, and Gilchrist had a key block on a Walker layup that helped kill any chance of a UConn comeback. USF hit 7-of-8 free throws in the final 1:04 to ice the win, while the Huskies missed a pair of 3-pointers with under 20 seconds to go for the final outcome.

The crowd gave Howard a standing ovation when he came out of the game following the team's defensive rebound with 10 seconds to go.

USF will now head to the BIG EAST Championship Sunday for Tuesday's game against DePaul.

Team Notes
- USF recognized the career accomplishments of four seniors prior to the game, including Chris Howard, Ryan Kardok, Mike Mercer and Alex Rivas, by presenting them with framed jerseys.

- Bulls fans flocked to the Sun Dome in record numbers as 8,317 people came to watch USF in the final home game of the season. The previous season attendance high was 6,607 against Cincinnati on Feb. 16, 2010. The 8,317 is the most since 8,350 came out for the USF-Syracuse game on Jan. 2, 2009.

- Those fans saw USF win its third game in a row while UConn dropped its third straight. Before this season, USF had never won two BIG EAST games in a row, but this year the Bulls have won four straight and now three straight.

- USF defeated UConn for the first time in school history, after the Huskies had won the previous seven meetings. USF also defeated Providence this year for the first time, as Villanova now stands as the only BIG EAST team the Bulls have never beaten in 39 seasons.

- USF allowed just one player to score in double figures in Kemba Walker, who posted 18, the only game this year an opponent failed to have two or more players score in double figures.

- USF hit 17-of-21 free throws for an 81 percent clip. Dominique Jones led the way with his 6-of-7 performance. It marks the fourth time this year USF has hit for 80 percent or better from the line.

- The Bulls also hit 50.9 percent from the floor, the seventh time this season the Bulls have hit 50 percent or better in a game.

- USF, which has struggled shooting the 3 in recent games, hit 4-of-6 against the Huskies. USF has hit 40 percent or better just three times in BIG EAST games.

Individual Notes
- Senior Chris Howard hit a pair of long balls, the first time he has hit multiple threes in a game since hitting two at Notre Dame on Feb. 7. 

- Howard recorded five assists, the most since his five against St. John's on Feb. 20, as he now stands just five away from tying Tommy Tonelli for fourth all-time in assists.

- Sophomore Augustus Gilchrist knocked down a pair of threes in the game, his first multiple three-pointer game since he had two on Nov. 27 against FAU.

- Gilchrist scored in double-digits for the third-straight game and fourth time in his last six games with his 17-point performance.

- Senior Mike Mercer grabbed a game-high eight rebounds, the third-straight game he has pulled down seven or more rebounds.

- Mercer scored 12 points to record double-digit points in five of his last six games.

- With a tip-in at the 3:33 mark, Dominique Jones scored his fifth and sixth points of the game to move into third on the USF single season points list. Jones started the game with 620 this season, passed Charlie Bradley's 625 (1983-84), and now trails Bradley's second-place 652 (1984-85). Jones currently has 640 points this season.

- Jones also hit 6-of-7 free throws, as he needs just two more to pass Bradley for the most made in a season. Jones has 188, while Bradley has owned the top mark since 1982-83 when he sank 189 on the year.

- Jones recorded his 39th 20-point game of his career by scoring 20 against UConn.