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Message: [QUOTE="YearoftheHusky, post: 3746452, member: 277"] [URL unfurl="true"]https://theathletic.com/2217372/2020/11/24/college-basketball-gonzaga-villanova-virginia-uconn-michigan/?source=user_shared_article[/URL] [SIZE=5][B]UConn[/B][/SIZE] If you’re looking for a program whose stock price will rise in the next five years, you should look for one currently facing a wide chasm between recent performance and traditional past. You should search for a school with outstanding facilities and a large, passionate fan base. Try to find one where the basketball program outshines football. [URL='https://theathletic.com/2199344/2020/11/16/dan-hurley-uconn-new-jersey-bob-hurley/']A young, energetic, intelligent, charismatic coach with a worthy pedigree[/URL] and something to prove would be a major plus. And just to get crazy, see if you can find a program that has just gone through a major conference upgrade. As impossible as it seems that any program could match all those criteria, Connecticut somehow checks every box. The Huskies have claimed four national championships in the last 21 years, more than any other school during that time. Yet, this program has fallen on hard times of late, having missed out on the tournament in five of the last six years and gone through a bitter divorce with Kevin Ollie, the former UConn point guard and the coach of the 2014 champs. So there was plenty of work to do for Dan Hurley when he took over in 2018, but also plenty of upside. The ceiling got exponentially higher this fall when UConn, which moved to the newly formed American Athletic Conference in 2014 due to ill-advised football ambitions, returned to its roots and rejoined the Big East. That decision has had a galvanizing effect on recruiting. The Huskies’ current freshman class was ranked second in the Big East by 247Sports, and Hurley has already secured three commitments from top-100 players for next season. Hurley, of course, comes from a bona fide basketball royalty. His father, Bob Sr., won 26 state championships while coaching St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, N.J., and is one of three high school coaches inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Hurley’s brother, Bobby, won two NCAA titles at Duke and is the head coach at Arizona State. Dan Hurley is just 47, and he has already proved himself to be a capable coach in previous stints at Wagner and Rhode Island. He has the energy, the acumen and the Jersey pluck required to jump-start this once-proud program. Now that UConn is back where it belongs in the Big East, Hurley is ready to take the Huskies to great and familiar heights. — [I]Seth Davis[/I] [/QUOTE]

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