HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Freshman Tony Robertson more than made up for Khalid El-Amin's poor shooting game.

Robertson had a career-high 22 points as Connecticut (No. 3 ESPN/USA Today, No. 2 AP) overcame a sluggish start to defeat in-state rival Fairfield 84-60 Thursday night.

	Connecticut's Ajou Deng, right, tries to steal the ball from Fairfield's Sam Spann on Thursday.

Connecticut pulled away in the second half for its eighth straight victory despite a 1-for-13 shooting night by El-Amin, who finished with four points.

"I've had nights like this before," El-Amin said. "All that matters is how you respond to them. Hopefully it's out of my system and I'll have a better night the next game in Houston."

Robinson was 8-for-11 from the field, including 3-of-4 from 3-point range.

"Khalid was off and all my shots were falling. It was as simple as that," Robertson said.

The Huskies (8-1) increased their series edge to 25-5 by winning their 15th straight over the Stags.

Also in double figures for the Huskies were Albert Mouring with 17, Kevin Freeman with 14 and Jake Voskuhl with 11 to go with a career-best 10 rebounds.

Jermaine Clark and Jeremy Logan each had 13 points for the Stags (2-6) and Darren Phillip had 16 rebounds.

Connecticut missed its first eight shots and was down 5-0 after 4½ minutes. The Huskies finally got on the board on a basket by Freeman with 15:10 remaining.

"This was a grind game for us," UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. "We're going to have games like that but I think we played pretty good, especially in the second half. In the second half we did a nice job."

Robertson came off the bench to score six straight points to give Connecticut its first lead at 8-7, and the Huskies later took the lead for good at 10-9 on a layup by Freeman.

The Stags fell behind 23-14, but battled back to trail only 28-25 with 2:07 remaining after two free throws by Andy Buzbee.

Connecticut closed with an 8-3 run to lead 36-28 at the half, then started the second half with a 10-2 run.

"I yelled at them because we were hurrying our shots and we didn't stay in our defense well enough," Calhoun said. "We missed a lot of wide-open shots and that's not like us."