UConn means something. This is how Dan Hurley made it matter again

BRENDAN QUINN • JAN. 10, 2023

STORRS, Conn. — People of a certain age speak of UConn basketball a certain way. The great UConn teams of the 1990s and early 2000s were their own thing, shouldering their way onstage with bluebloods and winning national titles at a rate they couldn’t keep up with. Tom Wolfe once wrote that the Beatles want to hold your hand, but the Rolling Stones want to burn down your town. That’s basically UConn hoops. Programs like Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State have their little Champions Classic. But the Huskies’ four national titles since 1999 outpace ’em all.

Dan Hurley is most definitely of a certain age and of a certain bend. He turns 50 next week. He’s from the Northeast, born to a world where Big East basketball was sovereign. Georgetown, Syracuse, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Villanova reigned. That is, until Jim Calhoun showed up out of nowhere, dragging a former agricultural college from the backwoods of Connecticut into the fray.

Hurley speaks of UConn’s young ghosts like a lot of us do.

“I mean, Donyell? Ray? Rip? C’mon, man,” he says.

Today, Hurley can comfortably revisit the past because his current team looks the part. The Huskies are 15-2, back in the top 10, back in the Big East championship mix, and it feels right. That last part may sound abstract, but it’s true. Two recent road trips to Xavier and rival Providence amounted to certifiably big games for the home teams. In turn, UConn found out what it means to be “back.” They were dealt both teams’ best shots and fell in back-to-back losses. Winning on the road ain’t easy in the Big East, especially when you’re the top target.

It’s been a long time since UConn could say that. But this is what restorations look like. Shave it down to the splinters. Then bring it back.

Two weeks ago, Villanova visited for a game at XL Center, the aging concrete bowl in downtown Hartford where UConn is required by the state to play nine games a year. During that day’s afternoon shootaround, Hurley reminded his Huskies that ’Nova has ruled the Big East for most of the last decade and still carries championship DNA. “Beat it out of them,” he said. The whole scene, to any college hoops purist, was unmistakably romantic.

seen it like this in years!” The Huskies did their part, out-toughing Villanova, winning in a slog, and improving to 14-0. A sold-out crowd cheered, then refilled the barstools at Rocking Horse and The Tavern, and everywhere else with a row of draft handles.

In Connecticut, what’s good for UConn is good for everyone.

It was all very different last year. UConn beat Villanova at XL Center in February 2022, and students rushed the court. The Wildcats were good (they eventually reached the Final Four), but on that day were only ranked No. 8 in the AP poll and fell to 21-7. For a program of Connecticut’s stature, the celebration was … unbecoming. “Afterward, we were all kinda like, man, really, they’re storming the court?” remembers assistant coach Luke Murray.

over Villanova was the program’s first top-10 win in eight years.

“Now that I think of it,” says Jordan Hawkins, a UConn sophomore and the Huskies’ second-leading scorer, “my dad was more excited when I got the UConn (scholarship) offer than I was. To him, UConn was like the Dukes and the North Carolinas. I didn’t know all that.”

OPPOSITE: Connecticut men’s coach Dan Hurley speaks to reporters during First Night events for the UConn men’s and women’s NCAA college basketball teams, Oct. 14, 2022, in Storrs, Conn.

JESSICA HILL / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Later that night, the streets around XL Center buzzed. Crowds stuffed into bar doorways hours before tipoff. A line formed outside Rocking Horse Saloon. At The Tavern Downtown, a distressed manager near the host stand blurted: “Haven’t

But let’s look at it from the students’ perspective, no? They are not of a certain age. They’ve never heard of the 1989–90 “Dream Season.” They weren’t born when Donyell Marshall or Ray Allen or Rip Hamilton played. They didn’t see the ’99 championship. They were toddlers when Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon did their thing in 2004. They were in middle school when Kemba Walker penned the 2011 storybook. They weren’t yet in high school when coach Kevin Ollie and star Shabazz Napier cut down nets in 2014.

A lot of that might feel recent. But it’s not. Not really, at least.

For those students, last year’s victory

From the 2014 championship through the 2019–20 season, once-mighty UConn posted a 110-90 record with one NCAA Tournament appearance. It got tagged with NCAA sanctions. It languished through an intense, messy divorce with one of its own (Kevin Ollie, ’95). It wandered an island of misfit toys, playing a string of ridiculous seasons in the mishmash American Athletic Conference. It hired Hurley in 2018, pinning the future to a 45-year-old with an eminent last name, but a questionable bedside manner. It wisely returned to the Big East in 2020 (sending its football program, instead, into the abyss of independent FBS status), and a gradual return to basketball relevance followed. Hurley brought the Huskies to the 2021 NCAA Tournament as a No. 7 seed, then to the 2022 NCAA Tournament as a 5 seed.

Now it’s 2023.

UConn arrived at New Year’s Eve at 14-0 and ranked No. 2 nationally before falling at Xavier. Afterward, coach Sean Miller, a Big East player at Pittsburgh in the 1980s, called it a huge win for his Muskies and