Dan Hurley - Uconn Basketball Playbook

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Dan Hurley - UCONN Basketball Playbook

Hurley came to UConn following six years at Rhode Island, where he took a program that went 7-23 in the season before he arrived to a combined 51-18 mark and two NCAA Tournament appearances in his final two years, URI’s first NCAA appearances in 18 years. In each year, Hurley guided the Rams to a first-round NCAA tourney victory.

In 2017-18, Hurley’s URI team posted a 26-8 record, the most wins by a Rams team in eight years, which included a 16-game winning streak, the second-longest in school history. Rhode Island swept to the Atlantic 10 regular-season title with a 15-3 mark, and spent seven weeks ranked in the national polls, rising as high as No. 14 in the USA Today Coaches poll. Earning a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, URI defeated Oklahoma in the first round before bowing to second-seeded Duke. Hurley was named Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year, earned his second USBWA District I Coach of the Year Award and sent two of his players to NBA teams, Jared Terrell to the Timberwolves and E.C. Matthews to the Grizzlies.

The previous season, Hurley took Rhode Island to a 25-10 record, earning an automatic NCAA tourney bid by capturing the Atlantic 10 Championship. The 11th-seeded Rams upset sixth-seeded Creighton in the NCAA first round before suffering a three-point loss to No. 3 seed Oregon.

It didn’t take long for Dan Hurley to put his stamp on the UConn men’s basketball program. Three games into his first season as the head coach of the Huskies in 2018-19, the team had three victories, including its first win over a nationally-ranked opponent in three years.

As the architect of two previous college basketball rebuilding projects, however, Hurley was well-aware that the challenge of returning the four-time NCAA champion Huskies to national prominence wasn’t going to be that easy. As with his two other program turnarounds, there clearly was going to be struggles and growing pains, and UConn’s final 16-17 record, while disappointing, was not all that surprising.

“When you’re talking about a program like UConn, with its history, it’s difficult to say we had a good year after a 16-win season,” Hurley said. “But I do think we made some good progress.”

Suffering eight losses by margins of seven points or less and dealing with the injury-related absences of starting guards Jalen Adams and Alterique Gilbert for lengthy periods, UConn’s progress could easily have included a number of extra wins and the possibility of postseason play. Nevertheless, Hurley clearly instituted a change of culture during Year One and with a Top 20 recruiting class arriving in Year Two, has the program headed in the right direction.