Watching what he does and listening to what he says.
Yesterday specifically, his demeanor down the stretch looked to me like he was coaching an early season exhibition game. He didn’t seem intense or focused on the details. I’m not discounting the power of suggestion, but right around that time the announcers were discussing who “needed” the game more, UConn or Seton Hall; and as they concluded that Seton Hall was in the more dire position, they showed Willard. By contrast to Hurley’s demeanor, Willard looked very dissatisfied and very concerned about the details. It was just a moment in time, but it made me focus on Hurley after that and it looked to me that he kept the same demeanor all the way through the handshake at the end. Never seemed to have a sense of urgency. Not the sitting Geno treatment we’ve seen when Geno seems to let the team lose a close one down the stretch so they learn how to win on their own, but more of a “hey that was a good showing no matter the result.”
And then in the postgame he romanticized the loss again, as he has the others, and beat a different version of his “undefeated when healthy” drum. For the last three seasons it was the carpenter narrative and how bad the program was when he took over; this season it’s “a few bounces away from the top five.” I get that it’s a sales job and they’re successful pitches with willing consumers, and I have been one. But at some point you need better results and that point is different for different people.
And Danny is very sensitive about results. That’s why he develops the counter-narrative. He is very much a process guy; more than I appreciated. And I think he Is trying to work more and more on accepting results when he thinks his process is sound, because there are many times when you can’t control the results, but you can always control the process. That’s basically the theme of Chop Wood, Carry Water, the book Hurley made the whole team read before his first season here. I read it then, too; and I can see how he instills that principle. In his case, it’s more like “play defense, get rebounds.”
In general I think it’s a smart and healthy approach, and one that I‘ve tried to incorporate in my own world because dwelling on results you can’t control can be unhealthy. But when some of the same problems keep leading to those results, I think you need to re-examine your process, and I don’t know if Hurley is doing that.
Duke and Cuse are more palatable. (My son works in the literal shadow of the Dome and his wife is a Dukie so I’m required to be somewhat tolerant.)
