Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. And now welcome, Inside the ICE House.
Lance Glinn:
20 years ago as an eight-year-old PlayStation-obsessed kid, I wanted nothing more each day than to come home from school, do my homework and play video games. My game of choice, EA Sports NCAA March Madness 2005. I mean who wouldn't be drawn to the front cover? Emeka Okafor, UConn legend, the best player on the best team. The then defending national champions. Ben Gordon, Rashad Anderson, Charlie Villanueva, the legendary Jim Calhoun as coach. Who wouldn't want to be even in a video game, a UConn Husky.
So I asked the question, who wouldn't want to be a UConn Husky? And 13 or so years after I sat in my basement running pick and rolls on my PlayStation with Okafor and Gordon, our guest today, UConn basketball head coach Dan Hurley in March of 2018, made sure he became one, signing a six-year contract with then the goal of winning a national title. And in the span of the last six years, he has turned Storrs, Connecticut back into the basketball capital of the world. A Big East Championship, four NCAA Tournament appearances, two Final Fours and two national titles. Taking at the time of his arrival, a program in a state of flux in the American Athletic Conference back to the Big East and restoring its glory.
And it wasn't just he who wanted to be a Husky, UConn once again became a destination for the nation's top high school talent and Transfer Portal entrants. It became a program that assistant coaches didn't want to leave and one with the success that other coaches envied. Today Inside the ICE House, coach Hurley and I will discuss UConn's back-to-back national titles and some of the student athletes that have helped the program reach these enormous heights. We will delve into the impact of his previous coaching stops, his mentors in the profession and his plans this off season as the Huskies look to three-peat next year, something that hasn't been done since the 1970s. Our conversation with Dan Hurley, head coach of the back-to-back NCAA Tournament Men's Basketball Champion UConn Huskies is coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Lance Glinn:
Welcome back Inside the ICE House. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so that others know where they can find us. Our guest today is Dan Hurley, head coach of the back-to-back and six-time men's basketball champion UConn Huskies. Coach Hurley joins us fresh off ringing the opening bell to celebrate UConn's most recent title, beating Purdue 75 to 60 back on April 8th at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Coach, I'm sure you've been inundated with media requests over the last couple of weeks. Thank you so much for making time for us, for joining us Inside the ICE House and welcome back to the New York Stock Exchange.
Dan Hurley:
Great to be here. It feels familiar. We were just here a year ago and thinking about the mecca. I was 2004, I was in the crowd in San Antonio sitting next to my brother for that Duke-UConn game, JJ Redick, Sheldon Williams, that great UConn team. And to watch UConn win that game next to my brother, who obviously was sad, that brought back some memory.
Lance Glinn:
If you could remember that game, were you sad? Or were you sort of sibling rivalry, sibling back and forth rubbing it in, in Bobby's face?
Dan Hurley:
I always loved the way UConn played. So as my career was winding down at Seton Hall, UConn was on the way up and becoming the dominant program. And they had had NBA players. They played a fast style. They just played like gangsters, man. And Coach Calhoun, he had the program, they were becoming like the "It" program. So I felt sad for Bob, but I was becoming a big fan of what UConn was becoming.
Lance Glinn:
And you mentioned Coach Calhoun. What's your relationship like with the Hall of Fame head coach?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, Coach has been an unbelievable mentor for me from the start. He has just in every possible way made himself available to the players, to the coaching staff, to myself by coming through and watching a practice, talking to the players, developing individual relationships with them where he adds so much value for what they're going through. And then for me, we always have a preseason meeting before the season starts where there's things he's thinking about that he wants me to think about. And then throughout the season, if I'm going through a tough stretch or we're experiencing great success, I always check in with the GOAT to see what he's thinking and to see if there's some pearls of wisdom.
Lance Glinn:
So Coach, it was just over a year ago that you stood atop the podium downstairs on the trading floor for the first time to ring the opening bell after your program defeated San Diego State, 76-59 to win the program's fifth national title. So for this most recent bell ringing national title, number six now, is it sweeter the second time or does last year's version stand out because it was your first and it was the program's first in almost a decade?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, I think you'll always remember that first one. But this year was different because once we got through towards maybe the end of the regular season in the Big East, you knew you had the best team in the country. Whereas last year we felt like we had an outstanding team, but this year was special. And then you had some players like Cam Spencer and Stephon Castle who were incredible players that didn't experience last year's Final Four and national championship.
So I think you realize you have a special team. You start to feel this enormous pressure like we've got to get to a Final Four with this group. We've got to win a national championship with this group. Anything less than experiencing that with this collection is going to really be something that eats away at you for a long time. So I would say this year was probably more relief because we knew we had the best team.
Lance Glinn:
Does that pressure help or hurt? When you know that you have the best team and you have those expectations, one, coming off a national title, but two, having the best team, all the expectations of media and fans of, "Hey, we got to get back there." Does that help or hurt?
Dan Hurley:
It doesn't. It's really just in these off moments where maybe you're taxiing on the charter flight on a long delay, going to the NCAA tournament where you have that like, maybe you're driving home from work and you think about it. For the most part, you're just so locked in on the preparation and you're so locked in on the adjustments and you're so locked in on making sure your players and team is in its proper form. But there are those moments where you're on a bus or you're on a plane where you do have that idle time where you're like, holy crap man, we've got to go all the way with this group. Because our team was one of the best teams I think in the last 20, 25 years in college.
Lance Glinn:
Absolutely. And in January of this year, on episode 394 of the podcast, we were joined by Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman, and she spoke to the uniqueness of the Big East, comparing it to other conferences, being so closely located to places like where we are today, the New York Stock Exchange, as well as obviously Madison Square Garden. Other conferences on a regular basis can't access these special settings like schools in the Big East due to proximity. Having played at Seton Hall yourself, being Big East through and through, are experiences like this part of what makes the conference special and helps it stand out among its peers?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, obviously the relationship with Madison Square Garden and playing in New York City and obviously the opportunity to do things like this today and playing in Philadelphia, and obviously we hit the Boston market as well, being in Storrs, Connecticut, but playing in Milwaukee, playing in Chicago, we get an opportunity to play in some huge media markets. And it's basketball-centered school, obviously UConn's football program, it's very important to the success of our athletic department and the future of our university. But yeah, what makes the Big East unique is New York City, MSG and then what we did today.
Lance Glinn:
So Coach, I'd ask if you've been able to relax since you won the national title a few weeks ago. I know the answer to that question. I know you haven't. So what have these last few weeks been like with obviously celebrating all of your success, but at the same time, building next year's roster and preparing for '24/'25 with the Transfer Portal as well as high school recruiting?
Dan Hurley:
I mean, our sports got so crazy between NIL and Portal that if there was another tournament that we could have played in after Phoenix, I would've played in it. I would've played in the NIT, I would've played in the CBI or the CIT. I would've played in anything just to prolong our time with the group and to avoid the craziness of our sport.
But we've embraced the changes. We've adapted. I think we don't use NIL as the driver, the driving reason why we are able to get the players to come into our program. We still want the players that we bring in, the student athletes to prioritize the culture, the style of play, the role, do they believe in me and the coaching staff? But we're also too, we are in a very fortunate situation where UConn provides us with the resources to attract the best players so that we can continue to go for the championship. So we're embracing it and we're going to put together a roster that hopefully is going to have us right back at the top of the sport.
Lance Glinn:
Onto this most recent NCAA tournament, you beat Northwestern by 17 in the round of 32 while shooting 13% from three. You dominated the glass in the Sweet 16, out rebounding San Diego State, 50 to 29, 30-point win. It was a defensive master class, at least in my opinion, and a 30 to nothing run that helped you beat Illinois by 25. And you matched Alabama from deep in your Final Four game in route to a 14-point victory then against Purdue and Zach Edey. You held every Boilermaker, not named Zach Edey to only 23 points.
So you were able to win throughout every game in the NCAA tournament in a lot of diverse ways, whether it was an off shooting night, whether it was crashing the glass, whether it was a stout defensive effort. How did these diverse ways of winning influence your strategy going into game to game, knowing that, hey, if we're not shooting well from three, we have other resources at our disposal where we can beat you?
Dan Hurley:
I was misquoted a lot throughout the tournament because I talked about us being as bulletproof as possible or avoiding the vulnerabilities that cause teams to struggle in the tournament because they're weak in a critical area. And what I always meant by that was our offense was not reliant on one player. There was balance scoring and there was depth. We were one of the highest assist teams in the country. And we were the number one most efficient offense in the country. We were also one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country. So from an offense standpoint, we could beat you in every way. We could score in the paint, we could score from three.
Defensively we were elite. We were one of the best defensive teams in the country. We guarded the three-point line and we didn't let you get layups. And then our rebounding was a strength as well. And then we played harder than the other team. Our energy, our intensity. And then the preparation in terms of the scouting, Kimani Young, Luke Murray, Tom Moore, best coaching staff in the country that would put game plans together, that put us in great position to win. So we weren't just a great offensive team or a great defensive team. We were so well-rounded that we could survive. We could flourish or thrive even if we had a bad shooting night.
Lance Glinn:
Your arrival to Storrs in 2018 came when the program was in the AAC and you led it through obviously the transition back into the Big East. You didn't make it to the NCAA tournament your first three years and your first tournament win at UConn came during your championship run during the 2022/2023 season. Is the success more meaningful because of the tribulations that you went through and the transitions of the ACC to the Big East? Frankly, my college basketball opinion, back to where you guys belong, the conference where you guys belong, did it make it that much sweeter that you went through all those things in the years leading up to now your back-to-back national titles?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, I just think it's the steps you go through as a program. I think UConn too, when they hired me, they knew I wasn't a finished product, nor am I a finished product at this point, right? You're just constantly trying to improve as a coach and get better. And I think through trial and error and roster construction and personalities in the locker room and having to improve our offensive style of play and philosophy.
I think there's just a lot you learn during those failures, those two first-round exits in the NCAA tournament. Maryland during that COVID bubble in Indy, and then that just absolute brutal New Mexico State game that you could never stop thinking about. I probably think about that more than I think about the last two years. It keeps you on your toes. But it's all the struggle and just trying to perfect your craft. And now we feel like we've got the formula and we know our type of people that can execute the way we want to play.
Lance Glinn:
So you bring up your offensive game plan a lot. Tell me where Kyle Shanahan fits into your offensive game plan? And your maybe not necessarily relationship, but how you view the San Francisco 49ers head coach and see how he runs his offense and then try to implement it into your own offense?
Dan Hurley:
We obviously as a staff, you prioritize your recruiting time, but we spend more time than most staffs just studying the game and tactics and player development. Just between myself and Luke and Kimani and Tom Moore, we're just always just studying different styles of play, whether it's a Division III, an NAIA women's team, Euro League, Euro Cup, G League. I mean, we're just always looking for ideas and concepts that we can steal from. And I think that our mindset was like, let's try to get the pace and the tempo in terms of how we execute our offense.
But then out of a single formation have all these different wrinkles to get a three, to get a post-up, to get an isolation, to get a cutting, to get a driving lane, to do all these different things out of the same formation so that when we call the action, the other team just doesn't know what they're going to see. And the other assistant coach who has the scout at the other bench, he could stand up and yell all he wants down there, what he thinks is coming, but they just don't have any idea because there's so many wrinkles to our formations.
Lance Glinn:
So a lot of wrinkles, a lot of winning in diverse ways. Throughout his four-decade-long Hall of Fame career at St. Anthony's High School in Jersey City, your father, Bob Hurley, Sr. won four national titles and 26 New Jersey State titles in a number of different ways as well. He could win with guards like you, your brother, Bobby, Terry Dehere, Kyle Anderson, could win with bigs like Josh Moore, Ahmad Nivins, Terrence Roberts. How much of your coaching style and philosophy did you take from him, playing under him, coaching under him, as well as just being around both he and the game and St. Anthony's for all those years?
Dan Hurley:
He was just, my dad is probably responsible for just about everything we do on defense, like our whole defensive philosophy. And then he was so ahead of his time in terms of the way he looked at coaching, the mastery of it, the mastery of tactics, the mastery of fundamental teaching, of player development, of branding your program, of motivation and psychology. A holistic approach to developing young men that become better people, smarter people, not just better basketball players. So he was just way, way ahead of his time and is one of the best coaches of his generation at any level. He's as good as Coach K, he's as good as Phil Jackson, he's as good as anyone that's worn the whistle in the last 50 years.
Lance Glinn:
You played while at Seton Hall for P.J. Carlesimo. You've obviously forged a lot of relationships during your time, both as a player as well as obviously now a coach. Who are some of, not necessarily mentors, but people that you look up to, go to for advice in the industry that you really take to heart?
Dan Hurley:
So Coach Carlesimo just has had a huge impact and he got me really my first college job at Wagner, so he opened up the door for me to even break into the business. But that's been a valued relationship. Coach Blaney who took over for P.J. And I wouldn't be involved in basketball unless he came into my life and took over. And he became a real father figure for me at Seton Hall as I was finishing my career there. Then coaching idols for me are people I've always looked up to, to try to model what I do after Coach Calhoun, Coach Auriemma, Billy Donovan. And that's funny, there were...
Lance Glinn:
The last two coaches to go back-to-back.
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, yeah. But I loved his style. I loved the way those Gator teams played, and he was a self-made player at Providence. I just loved those teams there. Tom Izzo, because I always thought of myself maybe as more of a football, I mean maybe even a better football coach because I'm an intense guy. There's a lot of divas in basketball these days. So maybe I was meant to be a football coach like Coach Izzo.
Lance Glinn:
Was that ever a possibility? I know obviously basketball is your career, but was it ever growing up, did you ever play football? I guess I should ask that.
Dan Hurley:
No, there weren't Pop Warner leagues in Jersey City. You just played in the street. It was a lot of street ball. And my dad, he let us play a little bit of little league, but he wanted us focused on basketball. He didn't give us a lot of options.
Lance Glinn:
It was basketball.
Dan Hurley:
It was basketball.
Lance Glinn:
It was basketball for Dan Hurley. So preparing for this, I listened to your recent podcast with JJ Redick on The Old Man and the Three. And you spoke to the personal feeling of being the distant third Hurley when it comes to accomplishments before these two national titles, behind your dad, who we obviously just discussed, and your brother Bobby, who went on to win two national titles of his own while a player at Duke, and was a lottery pick in the 1993 NBA Draft. Did that feeling of I guess being in the shadows of your dad and your brother drive you throughout your early career at St. Benedict's, at Wagner, at Rhode Island and then the early UConn years?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, I think it's definitely be a driver. I'd say two things are major drivers for me. I'd say number one was I let myself down in college as a player by not doing everything I absolutely could do to maximize my career at Seton Hall as a player there. It haunts me to this day, just the lack of commitment. It was a self-defense mechanism where it's almost like I truly didn't want to know if I was good enough. So I built in these excuses that I could fall back on and yeah, "Hey, listen, I didn't try as hard as I could," so we'll never know if I could have been as good as so-and-so. Maybe I could have been an NBA player. So I over pour into the coaching because I'm haunted by that. And when you grow up in a family like ours or the Harbaugh's or I'm trying to think of some other crazy families.
Lance Glinn:
I mean even the Shanahans, we already talked about Mike Shanahan, Kyle Shanahan.
Dan Hurley:
I mean, we're wired different the way that we compete, the way we strive, the things that we're pushing for. We're never really happy with anything that we've done. It fades quickly. There's very high levels of insecurity in us where we never think we're good enough. We never think we've done enough. And I think I'm obviously a lot lighter these days, but I don't think I'll ever lose that edginess.
Lance Glinn:
So I mentioned you started your career at St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, New Jersey before ultimately your first college job with Wagner. How did coaching at the high school level, those nine years you did prepare you for college ball and that first job at Wagner?
Dan Hurley:
Well, I think number one, I was able to experiment a lot at the high school level without the media scrutiny, without the donors and people crushing me, that I didn't know what I was doing. I think year one, we might've been four and five after nine games, and it wasn't quite going the way that you expected it would go for a Hurley. So I learned a lot. I experimented, I found my coaching voice, I found my own style of leadership.
The positive thing too about being a high school coach is you can't always control who's on your roster. So you end up learning to coach a lot of different styles tactically. Some years you got to play zone because you're not real athletic. You don't have control, you don't play necessarily a system. So you become pretty adaptable to any style of coaching.
Plus I was able to study a lot of college coaches that came in and recruited my players. So I was really locked into developing my own voice, experimenting a lot. And then studying a lot of these college coaches that were coming in to recruit my players.
Lance Glinn:
When you look at UConn's rich history in men's basketball, names like Emeka Okafor, Rip Hamilton, Ray Allen, Kemba Walker, Chris Smith, come to mind, and look, the list goes on and on with about 50 or a 100 more that I could name. Donovan Clingan and Tristen Newton are two players that took different routes to UConn. Clingan, obviously a high school recruit, Tristen Newton coming over from East Carolina. But both of them leave winning two national titles. And of course, Tristen was named the NCAA Tournament's most outstanding player this past year. With these accomplishments and their impacts during their UConn career, I'm going to put you on the spot Coach, where to you do they rank in the pantheon of Husky greats?
Dan Hurley:
Obviously the longevity of what happens after this will tell a greater story, how they do in the NBA, how successful their career is in the NBA. That's still to be determined. But just like in uniform, like guards that put the uniform on and what they did while they wore it, like Newton, no one's worn it better or done more with the uniform on like starter, driving force on two national championship teams. Bob Cousy Award for best point guard in the country, should have been Big East's player of the year. Obviously he got the AP, he did not get the coach's vote first team All-American.
Just in uniform for Tristen, he's got to have the greatest career in uniform as any guard or as good as. And then same thing with Donovan, just he's been the most impactful player in the country, his sacrifice the year before. He would've started on literally every other college program in the country that didn't have Adama Sanogo. But his impact his freshman year, we were the best offense in the country when he was on the court for his 14 minutes as a freshman. And then we were the best defensive team in the country for his 14 minutes on the court as a freshman. And then back-to-back champ, potential number one pick. At worst, top-five draft pick, plus the off-the-court what he brought. He's one of the greatest Huskies ever, both guys.
Lance Glinn:
So I saw a picture after the national title game, it was you with UConn greats, some of which I just mentioned, Ray Allen, Emeka Okafor, Rip Hamilton, Charlie Villanueva, among others. What does it say about the program and the culture that you've built that players who it's been over a decade since their time in Storrs still come back and are as supportive of the program as these guys are?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, it's just awesome to have it back. I think the way that we, and not every coach does it. I think coaches come into a new job and they try to hide from that history. They try to ignore it, they want to make it about themselves. And I think the most beautiful thing about UConn and basketball is Coach Calhoun and the great players, and Geno and all the great women's players. And just trying to absorb that and make it a part of who we are and honor that tradition and honor those incredible men that laid the foundation for us.
And then there's so much for our players to learn from those guys when they're on campus. And we get to go to dinner with them or they come to a shoot around and they share a message and then they exchange phone numbers with our players. And Jordan Hawkins develops a relationship with Rip Hamilton who becomes a mentor for him that he'll have for the rest of his life. I mean, that's the good stuff and I think that's what it's all about.
Lance Glinn:
So I was watching ESPN College GameDay's feature on a Day In the Life of Dan Hurley. And the segment that really stood out to me was you describing a championship culture and a clip from practice with fire in your voice shouting, "Adama Sanogo ran everywhere. Jordan Hawkins ran everywhere. Andre ran everywhere." All three of those players left UConn as champions. How do you evaluate when you're meeting a recruit or a transfer, how do you evaluate whether they have what it takes to succeed in your championship culture?
Dan Hurley:
You've got to watch and study and pay very close attention to all the cues and the different ways that they handle themselves. Whether it's in a home visit and the way they talk to their mom or the way they talk to their dad or the way they accept coaching from their high school coach. Or when they get knocked to the floor during a game and are their teammates rushing to pick them up? Or is nobody going over there because he's a narcissist and he's a selfish guy and he's delusional and he's going to sink your organization. I think you study the parents because you don't want an inner circle that's going to infect your organization with selfishness, or me.
You just want to bring in people. It doesn't get us anywhere to bring in talented people to UConn that are going to help us lose. You got to bring in people with winning qualities. Obviously they got to meet the baseline of talent and traits that you need. But it just doesn't get us anywhere to bring in people that have losing qualities. So you've got to figure that out before they enroll.
Lance Glinn:
So I want to dive into NIL. Do you think the system as it's laid out currently is broken? And if you had authority to change it, what would you do? Because it's essentially become pay-for-play, and that wasn't obviously its original institution. That's just what happens, and it's no slight towards programs that are doing it that way. They're just obviously using the system as it's currently constructed. But I'd think you'd agree with me that there are things that need to be tweaked?
Dan Hurley:
Well, yeah, the original, I think the whole thought behind the NIL was going to be I think a situation like a Donovan Clingan where he excels, he's an incredible player, he's on championship teams and now he's got all these off-the-court opportunities to take advantage of his status and his success, and he did incredibly well. I think obviously the collectives, I don't think that was the aim of this whole thing. Yeah, it's out of control. This is not sustainable.
I think there's also too, a situation where there's a lot of promises get made to players throughout the country where they're giving a number that the collective is going to come through on. And then maybe the season doesn't go well as the donors or that school would like, or they over-promised and they, for lack of a better word, they welsh on what was promised to these student athletes, which I think provides a need for contracts.
I think that we've got to get to revenue sharing as quickly as possible with the players and get away from where we are with the collectives right now. We need a commissioner for college basketball. We run the single best sporting event in the United States every year.
Lance Glinn:
Absolutely.
Dan Hurley:
March Madness captures the imagination of the country, unlike any other sport maybe besides the Super Bowl. But we just do things to hurt our sport, whether it's G League Ignite, or Overtime Elite or the Portal opening the week of the NCAA Tournament. We just do things actively to make our sport worse. And then we also market it as badly as any sport. I mean, we don't market our sport very well. We play the national championship game at 9:45 on...
Lance Glinn:
As someone who wakes up at 5:30 in the morning Coach, and who stayed up for the national championship of course. I understand the West Coast, but as you and me North Easterners, come on.
Dan Hurley:
9:45 on TNT or TBS.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah, TBS, TNT.
Dan Hurley:
Or TruTV. We're actively doing things to hurt our sport. And you just don't want... Once you lose the fans in your sport, the fans start thinking that this thing is so transactional and transient and they don't know who's on their team on a yearly basis. Once you lose your fans, you're done.
Lance Glinn:
And I do have to ask though, to the point of NIL, there was the funny commercial, I don't remember the brand, but it was Cam and Donovan Clingan impersonating you, who did it better? Donovan or Cam?
Dan Hurley:
That was the buy. That was our buy drink. That's the drink I drink during the game. That orange drink that some opposing fan bases has suggested that I'm drinking my own urine. I have a lot of enemies that don't love my antics. But yeah, Cam was bad. Donovan should have been in the lead role because Donovan was the best actor of the three. Steph was horrible. I mean, Steph, it was painful, but that commercial was so bad that it was funny.
Lance Glinn:
So one of the negatives of NIL is that it's allowed for a portion of the fan base around the country to find it acceptable to be more critical of student athletes because they're now getting paid. You have not shied away from talking about your mental health struggles while at Seton Hall and your playing career was before social media and before legalized sports gambling too, which also plays a role in this criticism of student athletes. How have your experiences informed the way you handle players and their mental health now with so many distractions at their fingertips?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, I just think that you try to give them just the mechanisms, I guess, to handle the anxiety, the pressure. What it's like to read those criticisms because these kids, man, you could plead with them to get off their phone and to not check their name and to get off of Instagram after a bad loss, but it's so much a part of how they communicate. I mean, they just screen suck constantly and they're scrolling nonstop.
I mean, for me, I give them I think a checklist of things that they need to do. And obviously we emphasize the ability to find somebody, either a therapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a therapist on campus that they can go to and talk to about any off-the-court things that eat away with them, either family things growing up or relationships, whatever they're dealing with. Obviously we have a mental skills coach to help them in terms of the confidence in handling success, handling failure, that works closely with the players. And then for me, I just preach nonstop the balance in your life, like that spiritual side of your life.
What does your faith look like? Is that Catholic? Is it Muslim? Are you a Buddhist? What do you believe in to balance your table? Are you getting a great night's sleep? What does your diet look like? Are you involved in healthy relationships? What type of podcasts are you listening to? What books are you reading? Do you gratitude journal? There's a lot of things that you could do to just put yourself in a great frame of mind because we are in a high-pressure environment. And it's only gotten with NIL and with prop bets and the amount of gambling that now goes on with our sport, how accessible that is. These players and the stuff that, the messages they get, the stuff that's said about them, it's super intense. So we just give him the mechanisms for them to just try to build up the strongest self possible.
Lance Glinn:
So pivoting back to the NCAA Tournament, there was a special connection between you and Nate Oats before your Final Four game against Alabama. You and your staff first identified Coach Oats when he was head coach at Romulus High School in Michigan. When you were recruiting E.C. Matthews who ended up becoming a star for you at Rhode Island. Your brother Bobby would then go on and hire Coach Oats to be his assistant when he was the head coach at Buffalo. How are you able to identify people like that in places that someone wouldn't formally expect? I'm sure when you traveled to watch E.C. Matthews play when he was at Romulus High School, you didn't think you'd stumble upon an eventual Final Four coach.
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, it was like one of those talent shows or something, right? I don't watch that much TV. But yeah, you don't expect it when you go in there. You just expected to just meet just a regular coach. I think from the first practice you just saw the structure and quality of the instruction and the practice plan and how detailed it was. It screamed like, great coach at any level. And then as you spend more time there and you see now they're going into the video room to do college-level scouting for their opponent in the first round of the state tournament while Nate is cooking a high-carb protein pregame meal to go and play. And I'm just looking around saying like, this guy, he's going to eventually, somebody's going to give him his break.
And then Bob had very little experience at that point. He was with me for two years at Wagner, and then now he's going into his... He did one year with me at Rhody, and now he's in year four in college. He doesn't have a lot of relationships, so he's trying to put together his first staff and he's struggling a little bit. We're like, "Hey Bob, you should interview Nate. This guy, he's from the Midwest. The league he played in was in the Midwest, and this guy's a potential, maybe got some star to him so you could get him on the cheap. And this guy's big time."
Lance Glinn:
So to the point of identifying talent, you've been so complimentary of your staff. You said it earlier in the podcast that they're the best staff in the country, Kimani Young, Luke Murray, Tom Moore playing pivotal roles, scouting opponents, recruiting on the road, helping build these back-to-back national champions. Kimani Young's routinely brought up in head coaching searches. Tom Moore's obviously been a head coach before. Luke Murray I'm sure will be one, one day. What does it say about the culture you've built that they've stayed? Especially a guy like Kimani Young, who, like I said, is constantly named in head coaching searches throughout the country?
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, it's funny. Two years ago, if we don't lose that New Mexico State game in Buffalo, which we don't think about that game that often, right? I think I might've mentioned it twice already? Maybe he's not here because I think back then Rhode Island was open and UMass was open and he was a finalist I think for both places. But maybe if we have long tournament runs back then maybe he is gone. So some of it's been timing. I do think for each of their skill sets, it's the perfect job for them. Perfect non-head coaching job like UConn for Kimani, Luke and Tom, it just fits them perfectly in terms of their contacts from a recruiting standpoint, coaching in the Big East.
I obviously give my staff a lot of opportunity and a big voice in how we play and how we recruit. So I allow them to develop. And then we make it so good for them, and the program is at such a high level, it just doesn't make any sense for them to leave and become head coaches for anything that's probably below Atlantic 10 for this point. So unless it's a big-time job that is really like a major opportunity, I don't see why they would leave.
Lance Glinn:
This year's tournament saw your team outscore opponents by an average of 23 points per game, passing Rick Pitino in Kentucky's 1996 national title winning team. How difficult is it to keep a team focused, blowout after blowout? Because look, it's human nature when things are coming so easily that you can let your guard down, in anything, whether it be basketball or just life in general. So how do you make sure that doesn't happen?
Dan Hurley:
Just going back to the reminders from the Seton Hall game on the road to Star Conference play where we were brutal. And then the Creighton game on the road late in the year where we were beyond brutal, like gates of hell brutal in that game. I mean, we were so bad. And that's how quickly things could get away from you if you get away from your identity. We got away from our identity in those games, and I think we dropped enough of those hints and messages along the way that the group understood that we need to be on point every possession.
Lance Glinn:
And continuing to discuss maintaining focus, prior to the game against Purdue, there were mentions of Kentucky pursuing you to replace John Calipari. Personally, as an average college basketball fan myself and a Northeast guy, I said to you, countless friends and family, "There's no way he's leaving UConn and going to Kentucky." But to deal with that chatter, whether it be in the media, whether it be on social media for fans, whatever it may be, to deal with that chatter in the news prior to the biggest game of the season, what was going through your mind during that lead up?
Because it's one thing to obviously have to prepare for Zach Edey and everything Matt Painter is going to run, and Purdue as a whole. But now to deal with these, I guess you can even call them distractions of, "Hey, Kentucky's going to pursue Dan Hurley to replace John Calipari." What's going through your mind to of balance all those and to assure your team that Storrs is home?
Dan Hurley:
Well, probably the best thing that happened to me with that whole situation was my phone broke on Sunday morning. That might've been the day Cal might've went to Arkansas on Saturday or Sunday? I don't know when he went.
Lance Glinn:
It was rumored for days later too.
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, yeah. So whenever, but that time where it became official and where it was probably at the height of the social media storm, my phone went on me. I had had it for 18 months and literally the SIM card, the whole back of my phone had just broken down from just a wear and tear. So my phone went down on me. And then when my wife went to Verizon out there and got a phone, and by the time I got a chance to talk to my agent, who obviously had tried me several times, number one, there was no way that I would leave the best program in the country to go to another program unless the place I was at didn't value me anymore or didn't value what we were doing.
But your agent too, he doesn't want you to say too much because he wants that out in the air because he's looking to renegotiate my contract, your staff's contract. You're trying to make sure your NIL is where you need it to be. All the program things, that continued investment from UConn and the state is all in place. So, you look like a bozo because you're trying to say, "I'm not interested," but you're just being evasive. And players are asking me in the locker room like, "Is there anything... Are you just saying... Come on, are you kidding me?" Like, "No way, but just don't tell nobody."
Lance Glinn:
Yeah. Was your agent freaking out when he couldn't reach you for whatever those hours were? I'm sure he must've been just...
Dan Hurley:
He was. He was. I mean, it's their time of year. I mean, they don't really do a whole lot besides maybe talk you off the ledge after a bad loss. But really the agent's time is March and April. So if he can't get in touch with me then.
Lance Glinn:
Something's going on.
Dan Hurley:
Something's going on.
Lance Glinn:
So when it comes to coaching and player movement, we often see change because people are searching for more. More money, more resources, more power, more playing time, if you're a player. They're looking for what they perceive to be a better fit, a better place. Do you believe in today's college athletics that with this constant desire for change, things like comfort and best fit are lost in this chase for more? Because I feel like they're just not valued like they used to be.
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, and I just think right now it's like this, whatever the proverb where it's just like the players or the coaches, especially the players right now, they're taking the fish. They're just like they're taking the fish and they're eating the fish, but they're not learning how to fish, like develop the character. They're jumping from school to school and basing decisions on where you need to go to develop the best skillset that's going to lead you to a life of success, great decision-making, character building. Learn what it means to become a championship level person. And you just never get a chance to do that if you're just jumping from program to program. You never learn to fix yourself because you just kind of run from yourself.
And whether it's my situation as a coach, I think the worst thing that a player could do is make a decision based on where they go to school, based on who gives you the most NIL, right? It's like you should be looking for a specific culture. You should be looking for a style of place that fits you, your education, the role you want. Is this the head coach that's going to make me my absolute best? And then obviously the NIL and that stuff, it's got to be competitive, but you're going to take $450,000 to go to a worse program when you could have taken $375 and gone to a place that may change your life, get a degree. Maybe you play in the NBA and it ends up costing you everything that you took $50,000 more dollars for one year.
Lance Glinn:
I mean, coach, we got players three, four, a new school every single year. I mean, it's gotten to a point where it's crazy.
Dan Hurley:
You play in five. I've seen players that they're on their fifth school. Or they've played in four schools. You can't tell me that that's healthy. You also, you never lay down any roots. You have no network. You don't have a university or donors or a coaching staff that feels beholden to you to help care for you, create opportunities for you. You're just a mercenary. And I think that's a tough way to go about life once basketball's over.
Lance Glinn:
So Coach, as we wrap up, no team has three-peated since John Wooden in UCLA seven-peated between the 1960, which is crazy to say, between the 1967 and 1973 seasons. Duke led of course by Coach K, Mike Krzyzewski and your brother Bobby, repeated in 1991, 1992. Billy Donovan, who we spoke about earlier in Florida, repeated in 2006, 2007. What does the rest of your off season look like as you prepare to try and win your third straight national title and keep that edge you have above the rest of college basketball? It hasn't happened in 50 years.
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, my brain is still on the seven you said. It's like, it feels far away. Yet, there was maybe a quick turnaround on that flight home from Phoenix where you're going through the roster of who you really want to return, who you really have got to save, and the roles that you believe them to keep us where we are. And for us, it's just some strategic adds. We added a center from Michigan who we think is just a perfect fit for what we have with Samson Johnson at center who I think is going to show even more next year, Samson. But big Tarris Reed Jr. from Michigan, I think he's got the traits as a big guy that's going to complement what we have with Samson.
Lance Glinn:
Great player.
Dan Hurley:
Yeah, I mean, just a big strong physical athletic, and I think he's better than he's played. I think we're going to unleash some things, I think with him, and he's going to really surprise people. And we obviously need some more firepower on the perimeter to replace what we've lost there. I really like our freshmen that are going to turn into sophomores, and that's Solo Ball, Jaylin Stewart, Jayden Ross. I think those guys are super talented. I love Hassan Diarra coming back and bringing that veteran presence at point guard. Ahamd Nowell from Philly is a freshman that I think is going to be one of the better freshman guards in the country. And we've got Isaiah Abraham coming in whose top-fifty, top-sixty, big wing, who's going to give us a lot of things at the three-four.
So I feel like we're going to be able to put together a roster that is going to put us right in contention to maybe do it again. And it's just where you want to be going into every season at UConn where obviously there's no guarantees that you're going to three-peat or go back-to-back or win it. We've been making it look way easier than it actually is. But I think every season you just want to look at your team and say, we're in contention going into the year.
Lance Glinn:
Billy Donovan, Coach Krzyzewski, are you going to give them a call to see and ask, "Hey, what did you guys not do to three-peat?"
Dan Hurley:
Well, I think what happened with Billy, the advantage now, I think it was a disadvantage last year, which is why I think what we accomplished was greater than what they did in the repeat.
Lance Glinn:
Those Florida teams were so good.
Dan Hurley:
But they returned like that whole squad.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah, I mean, Al Horford, Joakim Noah.
Dan Hurley:
Corey Brewer. I mean, they were loaded, the backcourt too. Obviously, Bobby Hurley Jr., the greatest point guard ever. Christian Laettner, Grant Hill. So they returned intact pretty much. But the one advantage that we have, we do have the Portal. So Billy's team went to the NIT because they lost so much. But yeah, we lost a lot these last two years. But we've got a chance to snipe, do a little bit of sniping in the Portal to add some specific needs and hopefully put us right back in it.
Lance Glinn:
Do you and Bobby have a competition on national titles? Because you're up two-oh, right now. I mean, as a coach, you're up two-oh, obviously as a player, he's got the two on you.
Dan Hurley:
We're even right now. But he's helped me get here. He's helped me get here, the time at Wagner, the time at Rhody, how he helped me get those programs going. I give Bob, he has a little piece of that ring. He's responsible for a little piece of the ring. But the Hurleys, we are super competitive. So yeah, that's all in the back of our sick mind somewhere, I'm sure.
Lance Glinn:
Well Coach, you're always welcome back inside the ICE House. And we hope to have you back next year celebrating Uconn's back-to-back-to-back national titles.
Dan Hurley:
We're already looking at the calendar, so I'm trying to figure out when this would fall. So let's do it.
Lance Glinn:
Coach, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Dan Hurley:
Thank you.
Lance Glinn:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Dan Hurley, head coach of the back-to-back and six-time NCAA Tournament Men's Basketball Champion, UConn Huskies.
If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. Got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, make sure to leave a review. Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @IceHousePodcast. For Josh King, Pete Ash, and our engineer, Ken Abel, I'm Lance Glinn, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you again next week.
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