STORRS, Conn. — It is 1 p.m. on a dismal January afternoon and, except for a few managers, Gampel Pavilion is empty. The Connecticut gamers have completed reviewing movie however have but to shuffle in from the follow facility throughout the road. Dan Hurley stands a few steps behind halfcourt. He’s carrying grey sweats, a hoodie, a UConn beanie and a pair of reflector sun shades. He would love it famous that he wore the sun shades “way before Coach Prime.’’
Hurley starts launching halfcourt shots, cursing under his breath when the first few attempts clank off the backboard or, worse, airball short of the basket entirely. The Huskies stream in, clomping down the stairs to the court, and Hurley, still in his getup, keeps shooting.
Finally, the ball swishes through the net and Hurley shouts, to no one in particular and everyone on hand, “Who’s the king of two in a row?” Ever obedient, star heart Donovan Clingan yells again, “You are, Coach.”
Hurley by no means swishes back-to-back pictures. That doesn’t imply he can’t be king.
It has been 17 years since a school basketball workforce has gained consecutive nationwide championships, the pursuit of back-to-back coronations turning into more and more elusive as the game dynamics have shifted. Not solely has no workforce matched Florida’s two-year run, no defending champion has a lot as carried the No. 1 rating into February for the reason that Gators.
Until now. Until UConn. A yr after dusting NCAA Tournament opponents by a median of 20 factors per sport en route to the 2023 title, the Huskies are probably, and frighteningly, much more succesful.
That UConn workforce limped via the top of December and into January, dropping 5 of six earlier than discovering its footing; this UConn workforce spent 5 video games with out Clingan, arguably its most crucial participant, and dropped not a sport. The Huskies are 23-2, have gained 13 in a row and rank fourth in the NET rankings. They’ve held their final 10 opponents to a median 60 factors per sport. All 5 starters common double figures, and they’ll go a dependable eight deep.
All this when such dynasty constructing is supposed to be unimaginable, when the NBA Draft and the switch portal rob groups of roster continuity, and title, picture and likeness alternatives allegedly destroy locker room concord. The Huskies had been hardly immune to the game’s passing fancies. Three of UConn’s gamers turned professional after final season, and one other transferred out. The Huskies introduced Cam Spencer from Rutgers to the workforce and promptly made him their place to begin guard, and one participant (Clingan), who has a advertising and marketing take care of Dunkin, has profited off his NIL way over his teammates.
Yet listed below are the Huskies, in place to be the kings of two in a row.
Parked off to the aspect of the court docket, an easel holds a poster board with a image of the Big East regular-season trophy. The Huskies cart the easel all over the place they go, altering the image relying on what trophy they’re pursuing. Earlier it depicted the Empire Classic trophy, adopted by the Seattle Tip-Off Classic trophy. At some level, the convention match trophy will make an look, adopted by the NCAA regional and so forth.
The poster, nonetheless, appears to be like prefer it went via a dangerous day with airport baggage handlers. It’s dented in the center. There’s even a small chunk lacking at the underside.
Hurley will let you know that he’s extra Zen, if not much less superstitious. He walks into his workplace, sidestepping a blue-and-white fleece shirt nonetheless in its packaging. It has sat on the ground in the center of the hallway for weeks as a result of the Huskies haven’t misplaced since somebody dumped it there. Hurley admits the foolishness of this whereas carrying an Echo Go+, which appears to be like like a lava lamp cross-pollinated with a mini blender. Hurley presses a button on the gizmo that retails for $250 and blue lights swirl, creating alleged hydrogen-heavy water that’s mentioned to cut back oxidative stress, enhance intestine well being, sleep and power, all whereas serving to to reverse the indicators of growing older. Later Hurley sends a textual content, extolling the virtues of the sensory deprivation tank he visits for 90 minutes, and the way it’s helped together with his “mental reset.’’
He says this mostly tongue in cheek – “I’m f—— Benjamin Button,’’ he jokes as he chugs the water – but not entirely. He does believe he has found an inner peace and harmony that has helped cut down his on-court histrionics. Hurley has been hit with technicals this season, but has yet to be ejected from a game. Progress.
Except there’s the poster board. The dents, nicks and missing chunks came courtesy of Hurley whizzing a ball at the picture when his UConn players did not practice to the standards he deems necessary to win.
Asked if Hurley is more intense this year, pursuing a second championship, or last year aiming for his first, neither Clingan nor Alex Karaban allow the question to be completed before answering. “Oh, this is way worse,’’ Karaban says. “He’s way harder on us this year. The intensity in practice, it’s just through the roof every day.’’
It is hard to gauge the difference, since a Hurley-run practice is never a picnic. There have never been scheduled water breaks or even opportunities to sit down. The Huskies, in fact, are not permitted to bend over at the waist when they’re tired. Hurley offers up some physiological reasoning, about expanded chests improving breathing, but then he gets to the heart of it. “Weakness,’’ he says. “That’s just a sign of weakness.’’ When Clingan, returning after nearly a month off, begins to bend over, Gavin Roberts, the team’s director of sports performance, rushes to his side. “No, no, no,’’ he says. “Don’t do that.’’
Minor infractions merit banishment to stair runs, the punishment so indoctrinated in the Huskies that when Hurley lays into Youssouf Singare for bad defense, Singare just turns and runs the steps without even being told. And despite buzzwords plastered in the practice facility declaring one of UConn’s tenets as “mindful communication,” there may be little thoughts to how issues are communicated. Were the Huskies to place a swear jar in the constructing, they’d possible not want a collective to fund their NIL.
Elsewhere there is likely to be wiggle room gifted to veteran gamers who helped you win a title a yr in the past. Here, there may be much less tolerance for even the smallest of transgressions. Hurley pounces on Clingan for failing to cowl a shooter in transition. “I know you’re mad at me,’’ he yells. “Don’t be mad at me for being honest.’’ After a bad entry pass from Karaban, Hurley covers his eyes for an entire minute, too pained to watch as practice continues. Stephon Castle, the consensus ninth-best freshman, is chastised for a bad pass, lazy defense, poor decision-making and shot selection. After a bad defensive possession, associate head coach Kimani Young laments, “We never make plays on defense. Never. When are we going to?” The Huskies, it needs to be famous, are 18th in KenPom defensive rankings.
Finally, because the blue workforce (starters) will get smoked by the grey workforce – with chip off the block/walk-on Andrew Hurley goading the starters “Whipping that ass, blue,’’– the Hurley in charge shouts, “Champions don’t do that sh–.’’ In his office later, Hurley sits on a sofa and plays armchair psychiatrist. He thinks maybe he’s so demanding as a coach because he’s trying to make up for what he failed to achieve as a player. He also digs into the psychoanalysis of what winning a title does to a man. “When you haven’t done it, you can’t tell me you know you can do it,” Hurley says. “You can think you have a great team, but you can’t be 1,000 percent confident that you can coach a team through six teams in the hardest tournament in the country and win. Now for us, we know deep down as a program, we can. I go home, I look at pictures in my basement and you think about how great it was. But then you also think, ‘Man, I just want to do it again.’”
What’s notable is how the Huskies reply to him. Sit in sufficient school basketball practices and it turns into simple to learn physique language. Slumped shoulders, eyes solid to the ground and backs turned are the common indicators that the coach would possibly nonetheless be yelling, however the accused not hears what he’s saying.
The Huskies take Hurley’s warmth with out a lot as a grimace. They both beat him to the punch and personal the error earlier than he factors it out, or stare him lifeless in the attention as he delivers his withering analysis. They run up and down the steps and leap again into work. Over and over once more.
The Huskies don’t merely put up with Hurley’s depth; they crave it.
Karaban is down three TVs. Video video games, it needs to be famous, don’t at all times behave the best way you propose, which is particularly troubling when you’ve got an analytical thoughts that prefers order and correct response. Karaban has such a thoughts. He is the son of a Ukrainian immigrant mom who has a doctorate from Northeastern, and a Belarussian immigrant father who works as a software program engineer. Karaban likes math and is chasing what UConn calls an ‘individualized major,’’ whereby he has mixed three majors – laptop science, sports activities administration and statistics – into one hellacious, numbers-focused pursuit.
So nerdy is Karaban – his mom made him revisit UConn as a result of she thought the primary tour didn’t have sufficient data about teachers – that Hurley anxious “his socks would turn yellow’’ when placed in front of crowds of angry basketball fans. In the first game of his career, Karaban scored 13, yanked down four boards, and dished out three assists. His socks were just fine. “It’s like he’s a superhero, or something,’’ Hurley marvels. “Like he has an alter ego.’’ Said alter ego surfaced this summer, when the misbehaving video games failed to do what Karaban intended. He tried to throw the remote at the wall but his aim isn’t as good as his shooting stroke. The thing went through the TV, clocking the screen so badly that it became unwatchable. “Yeah, it happened three times,’’ Karaban says sheepishly.
After losing to UConn earlier this month, St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino went on a classic misdirection rant about the foibles of the NCAA enforcement process, its struggles to properly govern NIL and the impossible roster churn that the portal presents. “You can’t build programs and culture,’’ the Hall of Fame coach concluded, echoing a refrain heard a lot this season as teams struggle to find continuity.
The Huskies would like a word. “We all try to emulate Coach’s style,’’ says Tristen Newton. “No fat ruts, that’s what he tells us. You can’t eat and get comfortable. We’re all on that same page.’’
Did they only get to said page thanks to Hurley’s stiff-arm? The Huskies will tell you no, that they came to Storrs from varied directions but each in search of what he delivered. Newton is a one-time unheralded recruit who had but one college offer – East Carolina – and opted to leave after his coach was fired. He liked UConn for its singularity of focus – he laments that the nearest Chick Fil-A is 30 minutes away – and recognized that Hurley would push him out of his comfort zone. “I’m more laid-back,’’ he says. “I needed to be pushed.’’
Karaban’s parents used to shoo him outdoors in the Massachusetts’ winters to play basketball. Spencer is a Hurley mini-me, who cusses himself out over mistakes to the point that the coach tells him to calm down, and Clingan, a delightfully kind, ego-less star, lost his mom at 14 and was raised by a single dad who works as a utility worker. He understands the idea of hard work and sacrifice. “You have to be a kid who wants coaching, old-school coaching, like people who will squeeze every absolute ounce out of a player,” he says. “Not everybody wants that. They say they do, but they really don’t.”
Hurley is neither the primary nor the one coach to key in on what works for him and recruit to that match. Jay Wright memorably pivoted his complete recruiting philosophy after a 2009 Final Four run became a dismal 13-19 season three years later. Matt Painter regrouped so fully that he now asks recruits to take persona assessments to be certain that they swimsuit him. But it’s, to Pitino’s level, getting more durable to construct a base. The Huskies have been pretty lucky. Only 4 gamers in the final two years have left, permitting the employees to use the portal to fill wants and not restock wholesale. Of the three transfers on the present roster – Newton, Spencer and Hassan Diarra (Texas A&M), solely Spencer will go to campus for one yr.
But it’s not like UConn’s street has been with out subject. Castle missed six video games with a knee harm, slowing the freshman phenom’s begin. Then Clingan, who battled foot issues in the preseason, exited a sport in opposition to Seton Hall with an harm to the identical foot. “What was I thinking?” Hurley says. “Oh, sh–.” Fair response. Clingan could not garner the identical consideration as Zach Edey, however he’s as essential to the Huskies as Edey is to Purdue. The 7-footer attracts pure consideration inside, creating open pictures for the wings, and is a defensive vacuum.
Clingan went again to his room feeling a lot the identical as his coach. His foot throbbed for a good three or 4 days, each step feeling like he was strolling on a mattress of needles. He was terrified his season was over. When docs mentioned as an alternative that he would solely want a handful of weeks to get better, the sophomore practically erupted with aid. Clingan is, by nature, a giver, and the eye he obtained because the returning key cog to a nationwide championship workforce in his house state (he’s from Bristol) didn’t at all times match snugly. “He’s the most unselfish person I’ve ever met,” says Karaban, his roommate. “He’s always looking to help you, with rides, getting you food, buying you stuff. He hates receiving stuff.” That, little doubt, added to his rush to return from the preseason harm. He admits now that he rushed his restoration, beginning again to work when he nonetheless had some lingering ache, which made him much less productive early in the season than he hoped to be.
This time, he vowed to be a extra affected person affected person. He adopted the methodical plan, whereas additionally utilizing the break to streamline his physique. He reduce out late-night snacks and exchanged sports activities drinks for water, leaning out his body. “I attempted to cheer on the bench, and not leap,’’ he says with a giggle. “It was a lengthy 4 weeks.’’
Around the nation, top-ranked groups with fewer issues misplaced dangerous video games, street video games, house video games and shut video games. The Huskies upped Samson Johnson’s minutes and even rotated Karaban to the 5 to cowl for Clingan’s absence.
They didn’t lose a sport.
Donovan Clingan says he rushed his return from a preseason foot harm. (G Fiume / Getty Images)
Somewhere between chastising Clingan for his transition protection and insisting that your complete group will fail as a result of of one errant move, Hurley goes to midcourt and begins heaving pictures once more. This isn’t fully out of character. Lost in the interpretation of how onerous Hurley rides his workforce is how a lot enjoyable he has with them. He hops into drills, smack talks, and cuts the strain with one-line zingers that go away the gamers overlaying their mouths with their jerseys in order not to get in bother for laughing.
To wit: He has determined sophomore Apostolos Roumoglou resembles a James Bond villain. When the terribly chatty Roumoglou protests a foul name, Hurley barks at him. “Hey, GoldenEye, get over here.’”
Says Clingan, “I swear sometimes he says funny things so you laugh and then he can yell at you for laughing.’’ He’s asked if this is a form of entrapment. “Yeah, exactly,’’ he says. “Entrapment.’’
So when, mid-rant, Hurley stops to hurl halfcourt shots, no one seems surprised. They just wait. Hurley swishes a shot and yells, ‘Who’s the king of two in a row?’” At least 4 individuals yell again, “You are.”
The follow-up clanks off the entrance of the rim.
So shut, however not but fairly king.
(Illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; pictures: Dylan Buell, Zach Bolinger, Rich Graessle / Getty Images)
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