PHILADELPHIA – To the naked eye, Bob Richey and Dan Hurley may not have a lot in common.
Hurley comes from basketball royalty, the son of a Hall of Fame high school coach in New Jersey and playing his college basketball at Seton Hall in the Big East. He’s grown up out of the shadows of his family, becoming a two-time national champion as a head coach. Thanks to his success, sideline antics and press conference quotes, he’s become arguably the face of college basketball.
Richey was a bench player in Division-II at North Greenville University in Tigerville, S.C. Sure, he’s a competitor on the sideline and has won a lot, but he’s remained underrated throughout his time as Furman’s head coach.
But the two coaches portray near-mirror images of each other in the way that they view the game of basketball. And it led to one of the most fascinating schematic games of the NCAA Tournament. Furman hung around, punching back every time UConn extended the lead to near double digits, and trailed by just five with five minutes left. But the Huskies finished the job, winning 82-71 to advance to the second round.
“They run so many different actions that they do what we do,” Alex Karaban, UConn’s senior leader, said. “They have a counter to a certain action, because it looked like the same action with a counter. I think that’s what makes them so difficult to prep. When we were scouting, it felt like we were going over a new play every day with how many actions they’ve got.”
And that’s not an accident. Richey, who has won 20 games in all but one of his non-COVID seasons as Furman’s coach, and finished better than .500 in conference play each year, admires Hurley.
Every coach is always trying to get better, and studying the best coaches in the sport is one way to do that. To find one that aligns with your vision of how you want your team to play gives you a lot of opportunities to learn.
For Richey, that’s Hurley.
“I think he and I share in our desire to see multiple actions in a possession and not just standing around watching one guy get a ball screen or play isolations,” Richey said. “Forcing people to guard multiple layers of concepts, that’s what makes the game beautiful in my opinion. I thought there was some beautiful offense on both sides of it.”
He admitted that multiple actions that he ran in the game on Friday were stolen directly from Hurley. One of the plays that he ran for Tom House, who made a bunch of big shots for the Paladins, is even called “Connecticut” in his system.
Even if the Huskies could recognize some of their actions, it was tough to defend Furman, which stayed feisty in the first half. It could’ve turned into a rout after UConn scored the first six points, but Furman used a flurry of 11 early points from freshman Alex Wilkins, who works with the same trainer as Karaban back home in Massachusetts, had the ’Dins in the lead.
Wilkins finished with 21 points, 15 of them coming in the first half. Throughout that half, Furman continued to build support from the crowd, which included a ton of Furman fans, but also neutral fans cheering for the underdog. As Charles Johnston drilled a buzzer-beater three to cut the UConn lead to four at halftime, the crowd erupted.
“I would say that it was pretty amazing,” House said. “We knew that if we could get it to the last 10 minutes and it was close, we knew that people would start to rally behind us, so we were kind of feeding off that. We just appreciate the support of our fans specifically, but it was awesome.”
It continued in the second half, as more and more fans joined the viral LIU “Fins Up” free throw ritual, but in support of Furman. Perhaps it was a little bit of “Dins Up.”
But while the Paladins had the crowd, and they had everything schematically that UConn had, it didn’t have Tarris Reed. Or anybody who could stop him.
UConn’s big man scored 31 points and grabbed 27 rebounds. That’s what it took for the Huskies, albeit shorthanded, to overcome Furman’s upset bid. The Paladins’ performance, and the preparation that the Huskies had to do to defeat it, left a serious impression on the two-time national champion coach.
“I watched Furman and East Tennessee State on my couch before we left to go play in the Big East Tournament,” Hurley said. “And I was praying that they weren’t in that 15 seed line because just watching them and being familiar with Coach Richey, that guy’s one of the best young coaches in the sport, their style of play, their offensive schemes, their culture, their level of play. I just couldn’t say enough about the respect I have for him. And that is just a big-time program, he’s a big-time coach… That coach is going to be coaching at a big, big place soon.”
Furman overcame a lot to reach this point. The Paladins faced four eventual conference champions in their first four Division-I games, going 1-3. Then, it dealt with a plethora of injuries to key players, but it had its key pieces back and ready to go heading into the SoCon Tournament, where it was the sixth seed.
After taking down a Samford team that had been scorching hot heading into the conference tournament, the Paladins defeated UNC Greensboro to advance to the finals. There, they beat top-seed East Tennessee State to make the NCAA Tournament. And they gave UConn as good a push as anybody could’ve expected.
“I don’t know if I have ever been more proud of a group,” Richey said. “This group had every excuse to just let the season drift away, and they chose to change. It’s one of those things we always talk about. Nothing changes unless something changes.”
