Two sons of coaches bring family intensity into NCAA Tournament showdown with spot in Sweet 16 at stake

By Jake Copestick (@JakeCopestick)

PHILADELPHIA — Dan Hurley and Mick Cronin are cut from a similar cloth.

On Sunday night in South Philadelphia, the two will face off against one another, a trip to Washington D.C. and the chance to play in the East Regional semifinals on the line. Ahead of their matchup, both Cronin and Hurley reflected on their similar upbringings, and the paths that they traveled to get to where they are.

The journey to get to Sunday started at a young age for the two mainstays in today’s coaching ranks. They’re both the sons of high school coaches, who spent their high school years playing for their fathers. 

Cronin was coached by his father, Harold “Hep” Cronin, at La Salle High School in Cincinnati. Hep won over 400 games as a high school coach, then spent 30 years as a scout in the Atlanta Braves organization, when he closed the book on his coaching career. Hurley’s father, Bob Hurley, Sr., coached Dan and his brother Bobby at the now-defunct St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, where he was as decorated a high school coach as there ever was. The elder Hurley won over 1,000 games at the high school level, winning five national championships and 26 state titles during his tenure. 

That’s a lot of wins that both Cronin and Hurley got to bear witness to, and a lot of knowledge that they absorbed in their younger years. The two coaches, now at the helm of two of the most storied programs in college basketball, grew up ingrained in the competition business, so much so that they thought their everyday lives were commonplace. 

It wasn’t until Cronin got into coaching, and Hurley began his college career at Seton Hall under P.J. Carlesimo, that the two realized they were wrong. What was normal to them wasn’t that way for everybody. Spending all those hours in the gym with their fathers, things seemed to come naturally to them. They absorbed things that they didn’t realize were so important until their later years. 

“I think it’s a huge advantage growing up the way we did in the gym, which you don’t realize until you go into coaching,” Cronin recalled. “Everybody has gotta learn things that you learn through osmosis. It’s not just your dad, it’s his friends that are coaches. Everything revolves around that.”

“Everybody’s dad is not Hep Cronin or Bob Hurley, Sr. You’re a kid, you think everybody knows what to do in late game situations, or how to run a practice. You realize everybody doesn’t. Everybody doesn’t have those dads.”

In Hurley’s first practice in South Orange, while the coaching staff was laying the foundation for Carlesimo’s Pirates, Hurley realized he was essentially an extension of the coaching staff. It’s like he came to college already with the answers to his first final exam. 

“When I got to practice at Seton Hall my first year and we were installing things, we were doing defensive breakdown drills, we were doing offensive installation,” Hurley remembered. “I was completing the sentences of my college coaches. When you’re so well-coached as a high school player and the son of a hall of famer, I was finishing the sentences of my college coaches in my first college practice.”

The advanced basketball knowledge that Cronin and Hurley possess was a given when spending that much time around their fathers in the gym. The other part that came with all that time observing was the intensity and emotion that the pair exude, which is perhaps what they can be known more for in the public eye, as their old-school way of doing things can draw criticism. 

Cronin and Hurley are brash, demanding, and straightforward. They’ll get on the officials and won’t be shy about it. They push their players to their limits. They’re fiery competitors, and often animated as they lead their teams into battle. What may look like being over the top is not a facade. That’s how they grew up. That’s how they saw their fathers coach. That’s all they’ve come to know.

The intensity that they carry themselves with is a part of them. Always has been. It’s 100 percent authentic. Regardless of what anyone has to say about it, their style works, and the results speak for themselves. 

Cronin has over 500 wins at the Division I level, and made a Final Four in the 2020-2021 season. Hurley won back-to-back national championships in 2023 and 2024, and owns a .725 winning percentage in his eighth season as the head coach of the Huskies. 

The profession that Cronin and Hurley chose to enter and make a career out of is one that comes with a lot of expectations. If you have lofty goals, then the emotions are a part of it. Cronin dismisses any criticism of how he and Hurley operate. He finds it foolish.

“You think Coach Hurley is not supposed to be intense, but you want to win?” said Cronin. “We’re not coaching little league, buddy. Everybody doesn’t get an at-bat, paying us a lot of money to win games.”

“If you don’t like me, you’d hate my dad,” joked Hurley. “I bet Mick would say the same thing. We’re coaches’ kids.”

There is a bit of a downside to the emotional aspect, though. The heat of competition is all-consuming. You can get lost in it. When the fire that they have gives them tunnel vision, it’s necessary to recenter and recalibrate. Cronin recalls an encounter with his father in high school that helped him put things in perspective, always falling back on remembering what is important, no matter how hard it may be. 

“My first year, we lost in the city title game and I was distraught,” Cronin said. “My dad said, ‘I got bad news for you. It’s not going to be the last big game you lose.’ Did the kids learn? Did the kids get better? Did you enjoy it?”

“That is a fight,” Cronin stammered. “It’s a fight for all of us because you’re so competitive, that you have to step back.”

For Hurley, it can be tough to not be affected by what the scoreboard reads when the clock hits zero. When the game and his guys mean everything to him, and you’re New Jersey through and through, that emotion will come out one way or another. 

“It’s so personal for coaches like me and Mick, which is where you see at times, emotional reactions to things that happen on the court because it truly feels like, personally, it’s your world, your team,” he explained. “The outcome of the game manifests itself sometimes in how we behave. For me, growing up in North Jersey, Jersey City, I coach the way my dad would be coaching, whether you like that or not.”

If you don’t like it, then good luck finding someone with the credentials of Cronin and Hurley to replace these regulars in the Big Dance. Cronin knows another line of work would be just as foreign to him, as the NCAA Tournament would be without he and Hurley, who have a combined 24 appearances in March Madness that span across five different programs. 

“If Dan and I would have went into something else, we would have no idea what the hell we were doing,” said Cronin. “It’s tough because in the moment, the competitive spirit that you see out of Dan and myself is why we are where we are.”