Dan Hurley, after a difficult season, sees a path for UConn to three-peat

No men’s basketball team has won three straight national titles in the NCAA basketball tournament since Richard Nixon was president during UCLA’s heyday in the 60s and 70s. Despite the seemingly insurmountable task before him, UConn coach Dan Hurley says he will view this season as a failure if the Huskies don’t pull the three-peat off during March Madness. 

The championship coach is hellbent on wringing every ounce of potential from his latest roster of UConn players, but it’s been an uneven season with a string of losses in an early tournament before the team rallied. While Hurley sees a path toward another national title this year, his optimism is guarded.

“It’s a zero sum game. The one that wins is going to have temporary relief. The one that loses is going into a hell hole of suffering,” he said. “I mean, that for me is how I look at these sports competitions.”

Sideline antics during a topsy-turvy Huskies’ season

On the team’s first road trip, UConn — then ranked second nationally — headlined the field at the Maui Invitational Tournament. The score was tied at 92, with the clock ticking down in overtime, when an over-the-back foul was called against UConn’s Liam McNeeley. Hurley was apoplectic, collapsing to the ground when he heard the referee’s call.

“The force of the blown call literally knocked me to the ground is how I’m trying to justify it,” he said.

Referees, unamused, tagged Hurley with a game-changing technical foul. UConn lost that game by two points and then lost two more games on successive nights. Hurley was, by turns, irate and inconsolable.

While UConn steadied and went on to win eight straight games after Maui, the season has been riddled with inexplicable lapses. In January, Hurley was caught on camera haranguing a referee and appearing to say, “I’m the best coach in the f**king sport.”

It’s a moment that he said now embarrasses him. 

“Sometimes I will say or do anything that I think may give me some type of advantage, either with an official or with firing my team up, or with carrying myself with a confidence and a swagger that is going to give my team the ability to play better,” Hurley said. 

Living up to the family name

Hurley harkens back to an era when college basketball celebrated its larger-than-life coaches. He’s also the son of a renowned coach. Bob Sr., was a high school coach in Jersey City who won 28 state titles with the St. Anthony’s Friars and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Dan’s older brother, Bobby, an iconic college player at Duke, won back-to-back national championships of his own. 

Hurley, on the other hand, struggled as a point guard in college at Seton Hall. He said failing to measure up to the family standard caused him a lot of pain. Fans piled on, sometimes chanting “Bobby’s better.”

“It gets to the point where you’re a shell of yourself,” Hurley said. “You’re not shooting the ball the way you have your whole life. You have a hard time catching the ball or even dribbling the ball. You know, you got the yips in a way.”

It got so bad that in December of 1993, Hurley left the Seton Hall team after only two games to get his mind right. He rejoined the following year, but found little joy in playing basketball. Coaching offered a second chance.

“I’ve got to make up for what I didn’t achieve as a player, and I’ve got to make up for that right now as a coach,” Hurley said. “My career eats away at me still.”

With his success at UConn, Hurley finally feels worthy of the family name.

“It’s not me versus my dad as a coach or, you know, what I’ve accomplished relative to Bob in basketball now,” Hurley said. “It’s just this bucket that we’re all just going to contribute to and we’ll see if we’re one of the best basketball families of all-time.”

Hurley’s unique game, superstitions and all

Hurley’s not your average college basketball coach. He burned sage on the night before the season opener hoping to ward off bad juju, pacing the free throw and three-point lines and willing away dead spots on the home court. Hurley’s pre-season ritual also involves spritzes of holy water and bags of garlic bulbs. He’ll get on his hands and knees to place the offerings of garlic under the bleachers to appease the basketball gods.

And it’s not just the superstitions that set Hurley apart as a coach. 

“Most colleges are stealing ball screen, offensive ideas from the NBA. Whereas, for us it was taking off-ball movement, less dribbling, more passing, more cutting, more screening,” he said. 

It’s more of a European model, borrowing inspiration from leagues in countries like France and England. 

“We’re going all over the place,” Hurley said. 

His focus on the game may be global, but Hurley knows better than to bring the agony of his work home, where his wife, Andrea Hurley, has a standard pep talk for the college sweetheart she married in 1997: I love you, but get over yourself. 

“Because he’ll get himself so down, and he’ll get in such a funk, that if I get in a funk with him, we’re going to be no good,” she said. 

To ease her husband’s churning mind, Andrea designed a private basement sanctuary. He heads down there to clear his head first thing every morning. Hurley takes his Bible out, prays and meditates. 

When he surfaces from his basement sanctuary, Hurley isn’t talking lineups or rehashing games with his wife. Andrea admitted the nuances of the game are lost on her. 

“One team loses. What’s the big deal? It’s like I always said, ‘It’s a 50/50 shot,'” she said. 

With UConn having just passed the 20-win threshold this year, that’s not quite the attitude Hurley is taking going into March Madness. He said he can’t fully consider the season successful if the Huskies don’t win a third straight title.

“Once you’ve done it, anytime that you don’t do it, you know, deep inside you’re not going to look at those years the same way,” Hurley said. “There’s going to be a feeling of failure that comes with that.”