Again, the Dan Hurley Rebuilding Plan is right on schedule. Year One brings the arduous process of installing a new culture into every aspect of a struggling program and suffering through the ups and downs that accompany the process. Year Two brings a notable step forward -- in talent, attitude, mindset and results. Year Three brings another infusion of talent and, hopefully, a move into the competition for conference and national championships. Dan Hurley’s UConn program has entered Year Three. Last season, the Huskies posted the program’s first winning season (19-12), the most overall victories, and the most conference wins (10) in four years and, when the season was abruptly stopped by the coronavirus pandemic, UConn was on a five-game winning streak to close the regular season and had major momentum heading into the American Athletic Conference Championship. With seven losses by four points or less – including four in overtime, two of them in double overtime – the Huskies’ record could easily have been even more impressive.
Had the postseason continued, the Hurley Rebuilding Plan might well have been accelerated considerably. As it is, Hurley and his staff brought in a Top 20 recruiting class in 2019-20 and have another Top 20 class in for 2020-21. Hurley’s 10th season as a college coach was certainly one of his most satisfying as he watched his UConn program turn a corner. He raised his overall college coaching record to 186-134 (.581) – and when you eliminate the first season at each of his three head coaching positions, which he had to spend stopping the bleeding at struggling programs, his winning percentage rises to an impressive .653 (149-79). Under Hurley in 2019-20, UConn had its first First Team All-Conference pick and first All-Rookie Team selections in three years and makes the move into the Big East Conference in 2020-21 riding the crest of an NCAA Public Recognition Award for achieving an APR among the top 10 percent of men’s basketball teams in the country. Hurley became the 19th head coach in the history of UConn basketball on March 22, 2018, when he accepted the challenge of resurrecting a program that had suffered two consecutive losing seasons. It didn’t take long for him to put his stamp on the program. Three games into his first season as the head coach of the Huskies, the team had three victories, including its first win over a nationally-ranked opponent in three years. As the architect of two previous college basketball rebuilding projects, however, Hurley was well-aware that the challenge of returning the four-time NCAA champion Huskies to national prominence wasn’t going to be that easy. As with his two other program turnarounds, there clearly was going to be struggles and growing pains, and UConn’s final 16-17 record, while disappointing, was not all that surprising. Although he was a national recruit coming out of St. Anthony High School and he put together an impressive college playing career at Seton Hall, it is as a coach that Hurley has made the basketball world take notice, as a program-builder and a positive guiding force for young men. While still a youthful coach in college basketball terms, Hurley has already taken charge of four struggling hoop programs – one prep and three college – and built them into competitors on the national stage. If his previous stints at St. Benedict’s Prep, Wagner College and the University of Rhode Island are any indication, the UConn basketball program is in good hands. Hurley is a product of one of the most well-known basketball families in the country, led by his father, Bob Sr., a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee following a legendary high school coaching career at powerhouse St. Anthony in Jersey City (N.J.) and including older brother Bobby, an All-American and two-time National Champion player at Duke, who played for five years in the NBA, and is currently the head coach at Arizona State. While following in those giant sneaker prints has understandably never been an easy task, Dan Hurley has always embraced the challenge and built himself an extremely impressive basketball resume in the process. After just nine seasons as a Division I head coach, Hurley’s coaching tree has already produced three other Division I head coaches – Wagner’s Bashir Mason, who played for Hurley at St. Benedict’s and coached under him at Wagner; Dan’s brother Bobby, who was an assistant under Dan at Wagner and the associate head coach under Dan at Rhode Island, before taking over as the head coach at Buffalo and then moving on to Arizona State; and Rhode Island’s David Cox, the associate head coach under Dan at URI, who was hired as the head coach when Dan made the move to UConn.
Hurley came to UConn following six years at Rhode Island, where he took a program that went 7-23 in the season before he arrived to a combined 51-18 mark and two NCAA Tournament appearances in his final two years, URI’s first NCAA appearances in 18 years. In each year, Hurley guided the Rams to a first-round NCAA tourney victory. In 2017-18, Hurley’s URI team posted a 26-8 record, the most wins by a Rams team in eight years, which included a 16-game winning streak, the second-longest in school history. Rhode Island swept to the Atlantic 10 regular-season title with a 15-3 mark, and spent seven weeks ranked in the national polls, rising as high as No. 14 in the USA Today Coaches poll. Earning a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, URI defeated Oklahoma in the first round before bowing to second-seeded Duke. Hurley was named Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year, earned his second USBWA District I Coach of the Year Award and sent two of his players to NBA teams, Jared Terrell to the Timberwolves and E.C. Matthews to the Grizzlies. The previous season, Hurley took Rhode Island to a 25-10 record, earning an automatic NCAA tourney bid by capturing the Atlantic 10 Championship. The 11th-seeded Rams upset sixth-seeded Creighton in the NCAA first round before suffering a three-point loss to No. 3 seed Oregon. Despite a rash of injuries that decimated his 2015-16 team, Hurley still managed to post a winning 17-15 record and place his team among the national leaders in scoring defense, allowing just 64.8 points per game. That followed a banner 23-10 season in 2014-15, during which URI led the nation in three-point percentage defense (.265) and ranked ninth in overall defensive efficiency. That team put Rhody back in the national picture, earning an NIT berth and reaching the second round before losing to eventual NIT champion Stanford, bringing Hurley his first USBWA District I Coach of the Year Award. In his six seasons in Rhode Island, Hurley’s teams were a combined 113-82 (.579), but an even more impressive 91-43 (.679) with two NCAA appearances and an NIT berth during his last four years. Previous to his tenure in Kingston, Hurley spent two years at his first Division I head coaching job at Wagner College in the Northeast Conference. Taking over a program that had just five wins in 2009-10, Hurley immediately upped the win total to 13 in his first season of 2010-11 and nearly doubled that total to a 25-6 mark in 2011-12. His overall record in the Northeast Conference was 24-12. Wagner was not Hurley’s first college basketball coaching experience. After graduating from Seton Hall in 1996 and spending a season as an assistant coach under his father at St. Anthony, he was hired as an assistant coach at Rutgers and remained there for four years. When Rutgers decided to change coaching staffs, Hurley opted to go back to the high school level and took over the basketball program at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, N.J., in 2001. It was at St. Benedict’s, where he also taught history, that Hurley maintains he really learned his craft, building the program into a national prep school powerhouse. In nine seasons, Hurley compiled a sterling 223-21 record, with four Top Five finishes in the national rankings. He coached four McDonald’s All-Americans as well as future NBA players J.R. Smith, Tristan Thompson, and Lance Thomas. Following the 2009-10 season, Hurley was more than prepared to advance to the college level and accepted the job at Wagner. Born (1/16/73) and raised in in Jersey City, Hurley was an outstanding high school player at St. Anthony, leading the team to a 31-1 record and a No. 2 national ranking as a senior. At Seton Hall, he played under head coaches P.J. Carlesimo and George Blaney, amassing career totals of 1,070 points and 437 assists and helping the Pirates to three NCAA Tournament appearances and an NIT berth during his career. Following his graduation in 1996, Hurley went directly into coaching, joining his father at St. Anthony for one year before heading into the college ranks at Rutgers. Dan and wife Andrea, who met while both were attending Seton Hall, are the parents of two sons, Danny and Andrew.

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