INDIANAPOLIS – Dan Hurley and the UConn men’s basketball team didn’t make a quiet exit when their 13-game winning streak in the NCAA Tournament finally came to an end last March.
The Huskies made a prideful effort but were ultimately sunk by the clutch shooting of Walter Clayton Jr. and the eventual national champion Florida Gators, 77-75, in the second round in Raleigh, N.C. Hurley walked off the court with his arms around seniors Hassan Diarra and Samson Johnson before he let his frustration out in a rant about officiating to the Baylor team that was waiting in the tunnel to play the next game.
That was the final boom in a season the Huskies’ coach referred to on Friday as “an ego explosion the whole way.”
“You go back-to-back and then you’re not quite able to maintain that level that third year and be where you were. Obviously I had a bad year. I think it’s hard not to be not at your best when you have such long seasons. You’re celebrating in parades and honored and throwing out first pitches and you’re at the White House and doing all these things, and you’re not as dialed in as you need to be with the roster you put together, with your leadership, with you improving as a coach, with you being that same driving force as the leader of the organization,” he said, back in the Final Four for the third time in four years.
“That dose of humility, I think, was great for our organization, for me,” he said. “We got kind of back to our roots of the type of roster we want to put together and the type of habits we want to develop as a tough, resilient, championship-level team.”
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It took a few days. Hurley wrote in his book, “Never Stop,” that he considered the possibility of taking a gap year, resigning and perhaps spending a season as a television analyst before he came to his senses and realized that decision would be irreversible.
He and his staff got back to work, immediately addressing the No. 1 area of weakness from the year before in their signing of point guards Silas Demary Jr., a rising junior from Georgia, and Malachi Smith, a veteran fifth-year player from Dayton. They brought in a highly touted freshman class headlined by Braylon Mullins and Eric Reibe – both McDonald’s All-Americans – and maintained their culture with senior captain Alex Karaban, Tarris Reed Jr., Solo Ball, Jaylin Stewart and Jayden Ross all deciding to return.
From the outset of the season, the roster was a national title contender.
But it wasn’t without a few bumps. It took some time at the start of the season for the Huskies to get healthy. Still, they ran through one of, if not the most challenging, nonconference schedule in program history. The only loss came to Arizona – also in this Final Four – by four points with Reed and Mullins sitting in business casual at the end of the bench.
They had to hold off a late comeback effort from BYU in Boston’s TD Garden, then Seton Hall in Newark, N.J., and had to mount a major comeback to win in overtime at Providence. There were a number of close games throughout the Big East season – and some tough, upset losses – that have led to the Huskies coming into this March Madness tournament as an underdog.
But they also built the belief and the poise that has gotten them this far.
When Michigan State fought back to erase a 19-point lead in the Sweet 16, UConn had been there before. When Duke built a similar 19-point lead in the first half of the Elite Eight, UConn had been there before.
“We’ve had to win a lot of close games throughout the year, and I think that that honestly just gave us a level of comfortability in a game that it’s a one-possession game, it’s a two-possession game, we’ve been in this spot before,” Hurley said. “This team is resilient, has fortitude, has earned the respect of the staff…. I think we got that belief back in the program that we can win the national championship.”
