STORRS – The 20 seconds between Silas Demary Jr. deflecting Cayden Boozer’s pass near half court and the UConn bench recollecting itself for one final inbound pass to go to the Final Four were delirious.
Dan Hurley’s eyes got wide, like everyone elses in the arena, at the steal. He jerked his hands as if he were going to direct a play with five seconds left, and, for a split moment, thought about calling his final timeout before he saw Alex Karaban pitch the ball back to Braylon Mullins in stride – a perfect pass right to his shooting pocket. Hurley folded his arms and watched the shot with the entire bench – except for Tarris Reed Jr. – on its feet.
The ball flew about 37 feet through the air in slow motion. It was on a proper line and fell through the net with a perfect swish.
Hurley immediately threw his hands into the air in disbelief, hugged assistant coach Mike Nardi and paced the sideline with his suit jacket half off and his jaw dropped. Then his face went back straight and he got up close and personal with referee Roger Ayers, who was informing him amidst the chaos that they would go to the scorer’s table to determine how much time was left on the game clock.
In that interaction, forehead-to-forehead with Ayers and then slowly backing away, back to his bench, Hurley never blinked.
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It could be, and it was, easily construed as an attempt to intimidate the stripes, a head-butt and a stare-down from a coach who’s constantly drawn criticism for the way he interacts with officials on the sideline. He has crossed the line before.
But Hurley denies that was the case on Sunday night – after all, what would he be upset about in that moment?
ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg said he talked to Ayers about the interaction on Monday and “he literally didn’t know what I was talking about. He said, ‘Nothing happened. The ball went in, I was running back, they were celebrating, Danny leaned in and said something to me, I said something to him and it was absolutely nothing.’ … That was social media trying to create something out of nothing because of Dan Hurley’s ‘allegedly’ reputation.”
Hurley had gone viral for a similar clip where it looked like he head-butted referee John Gaffney in the regular season finalé at Marquette earlier this month. He earned a technical foul and was ejected from the game and fined for an “aggressive confrontation,” but it was determined that no physical contact was made.
There was physical contact made on Sunday night, but the official NCAA rulebook includes room for subjectivity in determining what type of contact warrants a technical foul.
Rule 10.2.h states that a Class A technical can be awarded for bench personnel that, “Disrespectfully contacts an official or makes a threat of physical intimidation or harm to include pushing, shoving, spitting, or attempting to make physical contact with an official.”
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Ayers could’ve called a technical if he felt Hurley’s move was “disrespectful” or a “threat of intimidation.” But he didn’t see it that way.
“Really at that point in the game, we had it won,” Hurley explained on the Triple Option podcast. “He’s such an easy guy to work with during the game that I thought he was coming over to chest-bump me to celebrate the shot. Because it’s not like that for me with him, my experience with him has been, we haven’t won every game, I haven’t agreed with every call, but. … So in no way was that like me and a ref that I had been at their throat the whole game.”
“There were other points in the game where I had my arm around him walking out of a timeout, we were cracking jokes and laughing,” he said. “Now, the one at Marquette when I was screaming into (Gaffney’s) neck, yeah, that was a guy that was coming right up to the line and losing his mind. But that was more like the emotion of the shot, and this is a cool (bleep) ref. He was just coming up to tell me, ‘I think there’s gonna be 0.3 or 0.4 on the clock,’ is what he was saying to me. And I was still so hyped from the shot going in… If anyone would’ve walked up on me right there (I would’ve done that).”
Back to the shot, which will stand as one of the greatest highlights in NCAA Tournament history…
Why Hurley didn’t call a timeout
If Karaban hadn’t had the gut instinct to pitch the ball back to Mullins and instead tried to create a different look, Hurley was ready to call his final timeout and try to set up some sort of play. But the best option against a team with Duke’s size and length is to take advantage of the scramble and the chaos.
“If Alex like dribbled it right and looked like he was in trouble, I was going to call it,” Hurley said. “Once he pitched it back to Braylon and you’re like, this kid’s gonna let it fly. … But at that point in the game it’s like, four seconds left as that ball’s loose. You might not get a shot off versus Duke’s set defense. As well coached as they are, as talented and tall and switchable, it would’ve been a nightmare on a side-out to try to get anything good.”
How Tarris Reed Jr. missed it
Reed, along with the rest of his teammates and everyone else the social media algorithms fed it to repeatedly, has seen the shot probably 100 times.
But in the moment, it was the sound of the net and the crowd’s reaction that let him know it went in.
“I’m sitting down, I couldn’t, like, there were so many emotions going through my mind,” he said Tuesday. “We’re down two, Silas missed the first, made the second, they have the ball under the basket, inbound to (Cameron) Boozer, to (Dame) Sarr and then Sarr to the other Boozer (Cayden), and by the time other Boozer caught it I’m like, dang, they’re probably gonna throw it up, Pat (Ngongba) and (Isaiah) Evans down there, dunk, hang on the rim, game over, season’s over. So I’m just on the bench like please let something happen. When I (heard) that shot go in, best believe I was hype. I was everywhere.”
