UConn embracing its position while looking for its finishing gear, but also cognizant of what must be found

Dan Hurley, shown here leaving floor after UConn’s win at Creighton last season, leads Huskies back into Omaha Saturday at 20-1 and No. 2 in country. (Photo by ESPN)

OMAHA, Neb. — UConn’s annual trip to Creighton has, somehow or another, usually ended up being far more eventful upon its conclusion.

Two years ago, the Huskies came to Omaha as the number-one team in the country, only for Creighton to walk away with a 19-point win amid a court stormed following the program’s first win over a top-ranked opponent in school history. Last February, Liam McNeeley’s career night and 38 points led to UConn’s first-ever road win over the Bluejays, made all the more memorable by Dan Hurley’s now-famous “two rings, baldy” interaction with an overzealous Creighton fan.

Saturday evening, UConn returns to the westernmost outpost in the Big East ranked second in the nation and 20-1 on the year, but still trying to evolve as the second half of conference play beckons.

“As a coach and as a staff, and for me in particular as a head coach, it’s to always not look at where you are, but where you need to get to,” Hurley said in a pregame Zoom call Friday. “The improvements that your team has to make to play championship-level basketball, we’re clearly not there.”

“In the end, we gotta make more shots. We’re missing a lot of shots at the rim, we’re getting pretty good looks from three that we’ve gotta make. Those teams that were great, championship-level teams — Jordan Hawkins, Joey (Calcaterra) off the bench, Nahiem (Alleyne) off the bench, Cam Spencer, Tristen Newton, (Alex Karaban) — these guys are shot makers. And I think it comes down to making more shots.”

The availability of Braylon Mullins, who missed Tuesday’s win over Providence while recovering from a concussion suffered in the second half last Saturday against Villanova, would go a long way toward bridging the gap the Huskies currently face with their offensive efficiency. Mullins did travel with UConn, but his status for Saturday remains uncertain.

“He’s progressing through all the protocols,” Hurley said, offering as concise an update as possible. “He’s taken all the steps to be able to get out on the court, he was able to get in practice. I guess now he’s healing from here, but he’s feeling good, he’s returned to practice. We’ll see how he does on the flight, on the overnight, but I think he feels pretty good.”

“We’ve struggled with shot making. We’re getting a lot of the same types of shots that we’ve been getting over the last couple of years when we’ve been a highly efficient offense. I think more shot making is better for us because we’ve struggled with shot making this year at the rim and from the perimeter, and he’s another player that’s a two-way player. He’s a guy that can guard people and could make shots, and can make plays on offense.”

Hurley also addressed the comparisons of this UConn team to both of his two national champion outfits, something he did at earlier stages of the season when attempting to draw a parallel with the 2023-24 Huskies. The coach later correlated his current group to the 2022-23 team after the Villanova game, citing the improvement later in the year, but has now pivoted from that standpoint as well.

“I think the mistake I’ve made is even comparing this team to the ’23 or the ’24 team,” he admitted. “It’s a mistake. I shouldn’t be comparing this team to any teams that won the national championship. Going to a Final Four is hard, then winning two more games after getting to the Final Four is the ultimate, so I’m done just comparing this team to ’23 or ’24. We have a lot of improving to do, but going back to ’23 to where we are now, we’re in the midst of probably the most successful run that we’ve had on the men’s side, just in terms of winning games and championships.”

Hurley is now content with living in the moment, a mindset he has embraced more strongly this season as his team has navigated the season. Once questioned for an apparent inability to win close games, UConn’s identity this year has been most prevalent in scratching out wins of that nature. Nine of the Huskies’ victories have come by eight points or less, with a tenth by seven in October’s exhibition win over Michigan State. Included in that sample size, however, are wins on neutral floors against BYU and Florida, as well as December’s road win at Kansas, so it is not like UConn is hanging on against lesser competition. 

“I don’t want to lose sight of being 20-1,” Hurley reiterated. “Obviously, the metrics are what the metrics are. We’ve dropped since the Providence game, because, partially, the teams we’re beating obviously don’t have great KenPoms or NET ratings, or things of that nature, so we’re getting nicked even when we’re winning hard conference games. But in the end, we’ve got four Top 15 KenPom wins on our ledger. We’re not good at blowing out bad to average teams, but we’ve proven that we can beat the best teams.”

Still, the overall product despite being a projected No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed leaves more to be desired for the coaching staff. Hurley has been adamant about the lack of a killer instinct among this year’s unit, and continues to emphasize the necessity of salting games away in crunch time. On the contrary, he believes the experience in nail-biters will allow the Huskies to become more acclimated to recognizing the sense of urgency even if the line being straddled is a precarious one.

“We have the will to win,” he said. “I don’t think that the team is soft. I think that if this team was soft, we wouldn’t win close games. The team has been very tough-minded, but we haven’t proven a killer instinct, a nastiness, a violence about us on the backboard. Our ball security, at times, has been shaky, and we don’t have the killer instinct. We have the will to win because we’ve won close games versus some really good teams. I think playing close games is eventually going to put us in position to be comfortable in those situations, but we’re also playing with fire.”