Dan Hurley became the head coach of the UConn Huskies men’s basketball team in 2019. The son of Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame coach Bob Hurley, Dan would land his first coaching job as an assistant coach on his father’s 26-time New Jersey state champion and 4-time national champion St. Anthony Friars high school basketball team from 1996-97. Hurley wanted to be like his father, and achieve great coaching success, but the young Dan realized that he could never create his own legacy standing in his father’s shadows. So after bouncing around a few small-name colleges as their head basketball coach for almost two decades, Hurley took the head coaching job with the University of Connecticut Huskies, seeking to restore their once great men’s basketball program to its former glory.
Huskies fans had seen both peaks in and valleys in the 21st century. UConn’s fan base consisted entirely of Connecticut residents who were accustomed to watching an exciting, consistently very good team. Most years, they were in the NCAA tournament and would win a game or two. Mr. Honeyford,a beloved DHS science teacher of ten years and Huskies superfan, says that his love from the team stems from “mostly living in Connecticut and being showered with all of the success of the UConn basketball program, and then my kids both attended UConn and were there for some championship years, very exciting.” Huskies fans were elated to see their team bring three national championships back to Connecticut in 2004, 2011, and 2014. Suddenly, the dynasty fell dramatically. In 2017, the Huskies finished below .500 for the first time in thirty years. Things went from bad to far worse the next season, as UConn finished 0-18, unable to win a single game. It was decided that a change was urgently necessary, and so UConn hired Dan Hurley.
He had an immediate impact, and brought a tenacity and pursuit of physical and mental toughness that the Huskies were in dire need of. Hurley implemented a motion-oriented offense which consisted of driving down the lane, swinging the ball, on-ball screens, off-ball screens, and overall creating an opening to find the open man. This simple yet effective offense, with the virtues preached by Hurley, all beside an aggressive and physical man-to-man defense delivered an immediate turnaround to UConn. In Hurley’s second year, the Huskies were above .500, and during his third and fourth year, they made the NCAA tournament, but lost in the first round. For Hurley’s fifth season, 2023, something of the same was anticipated by Huskies fans. What they received instead, was a March Madness they would never forget.
The 2023 UConn Huskies were throughout the season led by their dominant athletic center, Adama Sanogo, and deadly sharpshooter, Jordan Hawkins, at the two guard. They were supported heavily by senior point guard Tristen Newton, a huge downhill threat to opposing teams, sharpshooting role players Andre Jackson Jr. and freshman Alex Karaban, who both could play any position from shooting guard to power forward, and who could forget their seven foot two big man off the bench, Donovan Clingan? At the end of the regular season, the Huskies were 24-7, and ranked tenth in the nation, expected to lose at some point in the conference postseason, the Big East tournament, and to lose sooner rather than later in the Division I postseason, the NCAA tournament. The doubters would be correct on their first statement, as UConn lost in the Big East tournament semifinals to Marquette at a heartbreaking 70-68 loss. This lit a fire underneath the Huskies, and they would take on a vengeance with something to prove during March Madness. UConn would give no other team in the tournament the slightest chance, and beat every team they faced by double digits, including teams that were heavily favored to beat them.
One of the most prominent of these wins was in the Elite Eight against the basketball powerhouse Gonzaga, who just lost in the national championship only two years prior, as they were dismantled by UConn from the very beginning, leading to a Huskies win of 82-54. In the national championship, UConn faced San Diego State, another team which defied expectations and clawed their way to the championship through many close games— even ranked lower than the doubted Huskies entering the tournament. Many believed that the close game experience of San Diego State would help them beat UConn. Instead, the Huskies delivered another knockout punch, dismantling the Aztecs 76-59 in a game that was already over in the first ten minutes of play. Honeyford described the key to the Huskies’ unprecedented success as “the confidence that they were playing with and the team they were so unselfish with their play. They were dishing to whoever was open and someone was always open, and they always found that person, and they absolutely just rampaged.”
The Huskies kicked off their 2024 campaign no longer as the underdogs, but ranked as the best team in the nation. They had lost Sanogo, Hawkins, and Jackson as they all went on to the NBA. However, they would still retain many key players with Karaban and Clingan returning for their second years and Tristen Newton deciding to play out his fifth year of eligibility as a graduate student, all which dramatically helped UConn. The Huskies would acquire freshman Stephon Castle, one of the greatest incoming high school players who decided to commit to UConn after seeing how great of a program Hurley ran with their championship season the year prior. The Huskies also picked up Cam Spencer, an elite shooting guard, a great shooter and facilitator, who transferred to UConn as a graduate student seeking to do whatever it takes to hold a trophy in his hands. Athletic role players Samson Johnson and Hassan Diarra rapidly developed over the offseason, and immediately found their place helping the Huskies go on to finish the regular season 28-3.
During the Big East tournament, they ran through their first two opponents and faced off against a familiar foe, Marquette, in a conference championship where UConn had the chance to deliver the revenge they awaited for a year. Very similar to their regular season opponents, the absolutely stacked, but balanced lineup of UConn was too much for Marquette to handle, and the Huskies cruised to a strong 73-57 victory. Rolling into the NCAA tournament, the Huskies were ranked as a guarantee to make the final four, and a huge contender to win the championship once again. After tearing apart every team faced by at least fourteen points, the Huskies, the best team in the nation, would face the Purdue Boilermakers, who had the “best player in the nation,” Zach Edey, in a national championship for the ages. Zach Edey was the seven foot four center for the Boilermakers, and was absolutely unstoppable all season long. He was voted by the Associated Press as the NCAA Division I Player of the Year, the voting was nearly unanimous, and Edey was expected to be one of the first picks in the NBA Draft.
The championship was to be the battle of two giants, as everyone wondered whether the seven foot two, often thought of as “slow, and unpolished,” Donovan Clingan would be able to slow down the seven foot four, complete and dominant Zach Edey. Their answer would be a shocking, but profound yes. While Edey still played very well, Clingan played the most physical defense of his career against Edey, and offensively played around him rather than straight at his chest. UConn’s offense was immaculate, with Newton, Castle, Clingan, and Spencer combining for 57 of the Huskies’ points in another dominant championship win, this time 75-60, as back-to-back champions. Honeyford perfectly summed up how Huskies fans felt about another championship season elaborating, “I honestly was not surprised at all…Tristen Newton and Donovan Clingan, teams did not have answers for them so they were a matchup problem with every team they played. I was worried about Perdue…I thought Edey world dominate Clingan but Clingan held his own and it turned out he kind of played around him so Clingan was not the liability I thought he was going to be.”
The Huskies now have the chance to win three consecutive national championships, and do something only done by the UCLA Bruins from 1967-73 who led by legendary head coach John Wooden, won seven straight national championships. Hurley has the chance to submit his name into basketball lore forever and forge a legacy in coaching that is just as great as his father’s. Despite being only four games into the season, it seemed that the 2025 season will be the hardest yet for UConn to walk away with the championship. They only have three returning players who played a genuine role in the Huskies’ championship last season in Karaban, Diarra, and Johnson, all of which will have to fill in much bigger roles this year, especially with this being UConn’s first season without a punishing big-man inside to rely on.
The absence of Newton, Spencer, Castle, and Clingan was devastating. The Huskies do have a few young up-and-coming players in point guard Solo Ball, and forwards Tarris Reed Jr. and Liam McNeeley, but it is too early in their first season taking on a main role for anyone to know truly how they will pan out over the season. Honeyford believes that the current roster for UConn means that “they’re gonna have to play a lot of small ball. But they got that speed and slash with Diarra looks fantastic, Karaban is back just reigning threes so again they’re gonna be a matchup problem because of that inside-outside game…we’ll see how they come together. It’s gonna be a challenge to get three.”
Despite winning back-to-back national championships, UConn was only ranked third by the Associated Press coming into the season, behind the Alabama Crimson Tide at #1 and the Kansas Jayhawks at #2. Many consider this ranking of the Huskies to be disrespectful, and that UConn is being heavily slept on as usual, especially since the Huskies are coming off of back to back national championships, so who could truly be one to doubt them. “I don’t care about the rankings at all…who cares about the rankings. They will take care of themselves by the end of the season,” Honeyford exclaimed. For the top teams in the nation for college sports in general, the first handful of games are always against very below average teams, very much as a way to stack some wins up and prepare the teams for the big games against other elite teams to come. For the Huskies, this is no different as they have played their first four games against much lesser schools with below average basketball teams, beating Sacred Heart 92-56, New Hampshire 92-53, Le Moyne 90-49, and Texas A&M 91-46. Each of these games were thoroughly dominated by UConn from the first second to the last, with every player on the court wearing a Huskies jersey excelling against those very poor teams faced so far. The Huskies handled business as usual, and so far is getting the job done as expected.
As of right now, it is still uncertain how the Huskies will match up against other elite teams such as Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, and North Carolina. One would definitely expect UConn to make the Final Four of the NCAA tournament once again, with the blend of experienced upperclassmen and up-and-coming underclassmen, along with the virtues preached, elite offensive principles of the inside-outside ball-movement game, and tenacious, aggressive defensive strategies of the great Coach Hurley. As insane as it may sound at such an early point in the season, one would have to genuinely believe that the Huskies will make history and win a third consecutive championship. The best thing about March Madness though, is that there are 64 teams in a single-elimination tournament where only one team can call themselves champions, so no one ever knows who will truly win it all until it is all said and done. So let’s look forward to the rest of the men’s college basketball season, and enjoy all of the excitement there is to come.
