UConn coach Dan Hurley’s emotions ran the gamut after the No. 8 seed Huskies dropped a 77-75 thriller to No. 1 seed Florida in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday. The leader of the two-time reigning national champions was irate walking off the floor but then sullen in his postgame press conference.
Hurley has come under the microscope amid his revitalization of the Huskies’ program in recent years. An overly animated sideline demeanor, honest candor with the press and unending thirst for greatness make make him one of college basketball’s most-fascinating and unabashedly authentic characters
Love him or hate him, he’s never boring. Such was the case again Sunday as Hurley was captured on camera dropping f-bombs as the Huskies left the floor. Then, shortly after, he spoke to Tracy Wolfson and seemed to be choking back tears as he explained his postgame message to the Huskies.
“I don’t think I’ll ever love a team more,” he said.
When asked about what a departing group of Huskies seniors meant to him in his press conference, Hurley could barely get through the answer.
“They change your life,” he said.
Here’s everything Hurley had to say from the podium after UConn’s defeat:
Q. Coach Hurley, could you start with an opening statement, please.
Hurley: Credit Florida. This just historic run that these guys have been on and the guys that have worn the uniform the past couple years, if it’s going to come to an end for us, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be in a game where we lost to a lower seed. There’s some honor, I guess, in the way that this went down. It’s a tough loss. We played in a manner that gave us a real chance to win. Credit (Walter) Clayton. He made some NBA level 3s off the dribble to beat us. It took that for somebody to put us down in this tournament after winning obviously a bunch in a row here. Obviously words can’t describe the respect that I have for the men to my left.
Q. Dan, what hurts the most about this? Is it because it was right there for you, or is it more the ending, if that makes any sense?
Hurley: Listen, (unless) it ended in San Antonio cutting the nets down again, it was going to end in a real emotional way for us. Part of it is probably, too, just the season, just how tumultuous the season’s been, how hard the team battled and fought just to qualify for the tournament. Then for how the game played out up through the last media (timeout), two free-throw rebound mistakes now. Past teams, we’ve had issues like that occur, but those were in games we’re up 15, 18, so they weren’t as magnified. Obviously the Karaban drive on the baseline, there was a lot of contact there. We’re up one, I think, at that point or two potentially. I thought that was a big play, too.
Listen, you credit the teams. A team like Florida, Clayton made two 3s off the dribble that were like NBA level, stop on a dime, highly contested, and I thought we had a lot of great looks in the game. I thought our off-ball movement created a lot of good looks from the 3-point line that we just couldn’t cash in on. A lot of emotion, man. We’re a passionate program. The players play with it. I coach with it. You’re always f—ing drained when it’s over.
UConn’s historic NCAA Tournament run comes to an end, but Huskies go down swinging in honorable performance
Chip Patterson
Q. Coach, I’m curious, you knew this was going to end at some point. Does the loss help put in perspective how special the last two years have been?
Hurley: I would say going into the year, there’s a lot of rewiring and things I’ve got to do in the offseason because you just get caught up in this tidal wave of success that we’ve had. You lose perspective. You struggle with the ego at times because you’ve been on this incredible run.
It will be nice to get to a normal offseason and just get back to myself as a coach and not have to throw out first pitches. You should only be ringing stock market bells and throwing out first pitches when you win the major championship. I won’t have to do things like that. I’ll be able to just focus on the upcoming season and make better decisions with all aspects of coaching.
When I was asked about the 13 in a row, you have no idea the company and what we’ve accomplished. So we can take some solace in that. But today was — to be that close to getting to a Sweet 16 and knowing that the 2 seed lost yesterday, this bracket could have really opened up for us, and we knew that going in once we saw the 2 seed lose.
Q. Dan, same question to you I asked the players. Can you just talk about briefly what each of these guys meant to your program: Alex, Samson, and Hassan?
Hurley: They change your life. Young men like that change your life. I was a coach, not necessarily on the hot seat going into 2023 — you’ve got to ask Dave Bennett — but until these men, until Alex Karaban put on the uniform and Samson (tearing up) — the players change your life when you have such special people.
Q. I’m going to ask you the same question I asked Samson. I was wondering how did you feel early on about the physical presence your team brought and the effort early on. Even when they don’t get the rebound, they’re trying to smack it out of Florida’s hands. I was wondering if you could comment on the early effort you guys gave.
Hurley: I don’t know that we could have managed the game better than we did. We dragged them into the type of game that we wanted to drag them into. We kind of dragged them into a Big East, low-possession game. It just did not resemble an SEC game. They shoot in the first six seconds of the possession; we shoot in the first nine seconds of the possession.
We dragged them into a game that was the only way for us to give ourselves a chance to win. I thought we did an admirable job on the backboard. The only reason we were out-rebounded by such a huge front line is because we took 14 more shots than them.
I think, when we go back and watch this film on this flight back today, I think it’s going to be crushing looking at those free-throw rebound plays again, looking at the Karaban finish on the baseline with a no call on that. I think a lot of the 3s, we took some tough ones because they’re a top 5 defense in the country. We had some really good look at 3s that could have given us some separation down the stretch actually.
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