Dan Hurley and UConn are chasing history, but Huskies’ head coach has unique perspective of not shying away from third straight national championship while also focusing on player development more than another trophy. (Photo by UConn Athletics)
Some coaches and players tend to downplay high expectations and opportunities to reach unprecedented heights in sports.
Yet again, Dan Hurley is not just some coach. His UConn players are not your token YMCA rec leaguers getting shots up after work.
Hurley, along with his new-look roster, has tackled the burning question head-on since the Huskies defended their national championship with a second consecutive crown last April. Where some of his contemporaries may sidestep the issue to avoid placing further pressure on their own units, the 51-year-old continues to show his different wiring, revealing that the quest to join UCLA as the only other program to win three straight national titles has only made him more aggressive in some ways.
“I’ve talked about the historical nature of our season pretty consistently,” Hurley revealed as he returned to Madison Square Garden, a venue UConn won all seven of its games in last season, for Big East media day. “It’s the elephant in the room. It’s there, and you can’t hide from this opportunity. That’s why I’ve coached this team so hard. I’ve coached this team harder than I’ve coached any other team that I’ve had because I know the challenge that lies ahead and the level that people have studied us, how we play and how people are preparing to beat us, and the target, just how relentlessly you have to strive to improve to defend what we have right now.”
“The season that we’re gonna embark on is going to be rare in terms of what we could accomplish, to literally join those UCLA teams, historical opportunity and how you can’t give everything that you absolutely have to reach that level of sport.”
The three-peat opportunity, which if completed, would represent the first in college basketball since John Wooden’s Bruins won the last of their seven straight championships in 1973, was one of the deciding factors in UConn’s lone returning starter coming back to Storrs in an attempt to add to his legacy.
“That’s one of the main reasons why I did come back,” redshirt junior forward Alex Karaban declared. “I believe we have a great chance at chasing a three-peat and adding myself to history. If I could be one of the winningest college players of all time, that’s something I never thought would happen going through the recruiting process in high school. I just can’t wait, and I gotta make sure I get myself and the guys on the team to realize that this moment’s once in a lifetime. We have an opportunity in front of us that we may never see again in college basketball.”
Karaban echoed Hurley’s candor when addressing the historic context of UConn’s 122nd all-time season—which tips off a week from Wednesday against Sacred Heart—but also admitted that the primary focus has not necessarily been so much on cutting down the nets in San Antonio next April.
“We’re not really talking about that right now,” Karaban said. “We’re more so talking about how we could become a better team heading into tomorrow, and making sure the guys take steps every single day to reach the level that we can ultimately be at. (Hurley) reminds us that we’re chasing historic things and it’s always a privilege to wear the UConn jersey. He reminds us about that every single day, but it’s more just seeing folks every day, getting better.”
Center Samson Johnson, who is one of three players—Karaban and Hassan Diarra are the other two—on both national champion outfits the past two seasons, was also cognizant of the need to improve even as the Huskies were the near-unanimous pick to win the Big East for a second consecutive year. UConn was also ranked third in the Associated Press’ preseason Top 25 poll, but the significance of the number pales in comparison to the growth that the big man has not only made on his own, but observed closely from his teammates.
As for the labor since returning from Arizona with a trophy in tow, the fruits of UConn’s labor may not be fully present, as Karaban admits his group is far from a finished product, but the upside and attention to detail is already in midseason form.
“It’s tough to tell right now,” said Karaban when asked if this year’s iteration of the Huskies could eclipse what the program did in each of its past two endeavors. “Last year’s team was the greatest team in college basketball. We’ve still got a long way to go to chase that, but we’ve got a lot of young guys that are excited to prove themselves and just get on the court. It’s a new energy surrounding the team.”
“You could see it from day one,” Johnson added, citing the ubiquitous desire and hustle in summer practice sessions. “Guys are all over the court making plays on offense and defense. It’s a great thing to have in a team, where you know you could put nine, ten guys on the floor that can impact winning. That’s a great thing for us. For a team like this, we need that kind of competition to get better every single day, so when we go against another team, we know we have guys that are ready to compete.”
UConn is not only chasing history in a physical sense, it is doing so with a set of circumstances no other college program has ever attempted to overcome. After Stephon Castle, Donovan Clingan, Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer all became NBA draft picks, Hurley reloaded by adding a trio of freshmen in Isaiah Abraham, Ahmad Nowell and Liam McNeeley—the latter having been voted the Big East’s preseason freshman of the year—to the ranks of seven returning players. To fill the void left by Clingan and Castle, he reached into the transfer portal to pluck Tarris Reed from Michigan to shore up the frontcourt, while adding Aidan Mahaney—who the Huskies played against in 2023 when he was a freshman at Saint Mary’s—to a lethal and deceptively strong guard stable.
What makes the additions even more intriguing is that neither of the two incoming transfers started in UConn’s exhibition against Rhode Island two weeks ago, and could very well be in reserve roles for most of the season, something Hurley addressed as a byproduct of his team’s depth but also unusual for how a top program has experienced a higher player turnover rate than most.
“I guess you could look at it two ways, right?” Hurley reflected. “You could say we must be really good if a guy that’s a really, really good player like Aidan did not start the exhibition game, where the quality around him is good enough for him to be in an off-the-bench role. But you could also be saying to yourself, ‘we really needed this guy to come in and play like Tristen, play like Cam.’ So you could look at that in one of two ways.”
“It’s such a unique position to be in. Ours is so different because we’re returning basically no one. It’s crazy to see the amount of players we’ve cycled through, and then you have players in our league that played against Josh Carlton (who transferred from UConn in 2021) and they’re still in the league. We’re so many players removed from just two years ago, so it’s so unique, the position we’re in.”
What is also unique is the way in which Hurley operates as a coach, how he operates as a manager. His perfectionism and innate desire to win without cutting any corners has spread throughout his staff as well, which is why he denied any added stakes from a personal sense going into this season. His explanation, however, further defines the maniacal sickoism—by all means a compliment to his ability to raise the bar—that makes him so very well suited to the blue-collar program he oversees.
“No pressure,” he deadpanned. “In one way, I guess you look at it and you say to yourself, in a weird way, if we don’t win three in a row, what are people gonna say? You suck as a coach? You could only win two in a row? You spend so much time obsessing over where your team’s at, and in my mind, every year—no matter what you’ve accomplished before—if you’re the coach at UConn and you have the resources that are poured into your program that I have poured into mine, and the way the school has invested in me in terms of my contract, that I owe it to the people that invest in me and invest in these players to literally drive the people around you to places that you don’t think they can get to, in such a pathological, sick, obsessive way that you’re just pursuing the championships so friggin hard. You’re not even thinking about the three-peat pressure because you’re so obsessed with the process.”
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