For everything Alex Karaban and Dan Hurley have done at UConn, neither has won at Seton Hall together. Huskies get another chance to defeat Pirates in Newark on Tuesday. (Photo by The Sporting News)
NEWARK, N.J. — UConn’s list of accomplishments this decade reads more glowingly than any other college basketball program in the country.
With two national championships, multiple lottery picks in the NBA Draft, consecutive Big East Freshman of the Year winners, and countless all-conference honorees, the Huskies have established themselves as the gold standard of the 2020s.
Yet there is one thing this current iteration of inhabitants of the Nutmeg State has not done since the 2020-21 season: Defeat Seton Hall on the Pirates’ home floor.
UConn gets its latest opportunity to slay its white whale Tuesday night, when the third-ranked Huskies invade the Prudential Center yet again to meet the newly-minted No. 25 Pirates in an 8 p.m. tipoff. Senior forward Alex Karaban addressed the losing streak in New Jersey after Saturday’s win over DePaul, emphasizing the need to clear one of the few remaining boxes on his checklist. Dan Hurley, however, focused more on the challenges Seton Hall presents rather than statistical trends.
“It’s a heck of a test,” he said of the Pirates. “We’re gonna have to take care of the ball, and we haven’t done a great job with that this year. I think that’s something, versus most opponents, that you can control. Seton Hall, they’re quick, they’re very aggressive, very physical on-ball, off-ball, so we’ve obviously gotta have great ball security and we’re gonna have to work hard to get open. Just like any team we play in the Big East, they know us well, and most of the teams we play against are given a lot of leeway when we’re trying to move around.”
UConn has had just about anything and everything go wrong in each of its past four encounters with Seton Hall in Newark. In 2022, the Huskies battled tooth and nail with the Pirates before Kadary Richmond took over in the second half and overtime to preserve a win for a team that later made the NCAA Tournament. The following year, Hurley contracted COVID-19 and missed the game, which Seton Hall won in the final stages of the second half after trailing by double digits. The two teams met again shortly before Christmas in the 2023-24 season, when UConn lost Donovan Clingan to injury and could not overcome the 7-foot-2 big man’s absence. Then last February, the Huskies lost their composure inbounding the ball against Shaheen Holloway’s pressure defense, allowing the Pirates to tie the game and ultimately win in overtime.
“I’m not really sure,” Hurley said of why his team has struggled in his home state. “I think probably two of those games took some really unfortunate circumstances to lose them, but I don’t think that anyone on this team is thinking about that. I have so few players that played in last year’s game, never mind were on the national championship teams that lost there. So you take this team in, that’s off to a good start this year and you play this Seton Hall team that Shaheen’s done a great job with, and you just focus on this game.”
At 14-2 overall, and 4-1 in Big East play, Seton Hall’s resurgence comes after a seven-win season a year ago and last-place ranking in this year’s preseason conference poll. Holloway has made the most of the roster he composed, identifying players who fit his system and personality to turn the Pirates into a group resembling some of his best teams at Saint Peter’s, where he rotated more than ten players through games and averaged double-figure minutes with each.
“Obviously they’re more talented, or else they wouldn’t have the record that they have,” Hurley assessed. “(Holloway) did a great job of evaluating really good players, both in the transfer portal and going to get the big kid out of high school (Najai Hines) in late summer, who’s had a big impact. He’s maximized his resources.”
“They attack you in a pretty diverse way. They’ve got great depth at guard with (TJ) Simpkins and Budd Clark, who’s fun to watch unless you play against him, and (A.J.) Staton-McCray, (Trey) Parker and Mike Williams. They’ve got some real guard depth, which makes it easier on all those guys. They’ve got a will about them, and I don’t know whether it was coming into the year picked where they were, getting off to a great start in Maui, but they’ve been able to generate a will to win, a will to compete.”
That bend-but-don’t-break spirit in Seton Hall requires two components for UConn to emerge victorious: Its toughness and its own depth, the latter of which has proven critical in some of the Huskies’ marquee non-conference wins. Hurley questioned the former in a pregame Zoom call Monday, stressing an inconsistency with playing hard and reiterating its need to be remedied against a Seton Hall team he feels is the best in the nation at that.
“To me, they’re the hardest-playing team in the country,” Hurley said of the Pirates. “And people have always said that about my teams, so for us to be successful, we’ve gotta at least match how hard they play. A huge reason why they’re so successful is because of how hard they play, the multiple efforts, the length, the edge that they play with. For us, things have gone so sweetly that these last couple games, we haven’t looked the way one of my teams should look. We’ve won a bunch of games in a row, we’re ranked high, we’re going for 17-1, but what we’re not doing is playing as hard as we need to play. We see that on film, I’m sure Shaheen sees that on film, I’m sure our future opponents will see that on film.”
“I don’t know if that’s human nature, overconfidence or what have you, but if we’re able to just get how hard we play fixed, and obviously our ability to take care of the ball, most of my frustration with the group is the lack of a killer instinct, the lack of just playing absolutely hard. For us, I think we’ve got the potential to be a Top 10 offense and Top 10 defense, and a team that could eventually win every rebounding war there is. Well, if you play Top 10 offense, Top 10 defense, you’re a better rebounding team. And if you play harder than your opponent every night, you’re not gonna lose very often. That’s what I’ve gotta get out of this group, and it’s just not happening right now.”
To expound on that, Hurley pulled his second unit in the final minutes against DePaul Saturday, putting his starters back in after the reserves allowed the Blue Demons to cut a 23-point lead in half. Karaban explained the methodology behind that, but also said his teammates would heed the example set by their coach. The senior also reaffirmed his confidence in his teammates to right the ship ahead of what could be UConn’s toughest matchup to date this season.
“Coach will send a message,” Karaban cautioned. “They’re gonna learn from it, and respond in the right way that they typically have throughout the entire season. But the depth is the key to our team.”
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