Dan Hurley is trying to schedule more blue bloods, he says.
North Carolina’s 2024-25 non-conference schedule was one of the toughest in all of college basketball, facing some of the best teams in the sport. It was a tough test for the Tar Heels who were 1-12 in the Quad 1 opportunities which included Auburn, Florida, Alabama, Michigan State, and UCLA.
It’s always better for the sport when games like that are played and one coach is hoping to see it more often.
Prior to Sunday’s showdown against Florida, UConn head coach Dan Hurley met the media and had an interesting comment about his team trying to schedule some blue blood programs like North Carolina.
“For us, obviously everything has changed in terms of fewer MTE’s and more wanting to do a couple of single-game MSG or somewhere big, somewhere in Chicago for a single game. And then home and homes,” Hurley said. “And yes, we reach out for Kentucky, we reach out for Duke, Carolina and Kansas. We are trying to schedule those exciting home and homes or neutral site events that get people’s attention for college basketball in November and December. . . But it takes two to tango.”
Hurley did also say that UConn will be announcing some exciting ones but didn’t hint against who. For North Carolina, they are up to the challenge of facing big programs as we saw them schedule a home-and-home with Kansas recently.
They also played UConn in 2023 at Madison Square Garden. Hurley is right that it’s better for the game to have these big matchups and that more programs should do it. Let’s see if these schools pick up his call for them moving forward.
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