Honestly, what happened?

[aburks41]

Luke Murray might be the smartest basketball mind in the country and I’m not being hyperbolic about that. Tom Moore is the best rebounding coach in the country. And Kimani and Hurley are both X’s and O’s geniuses as well. This staff is just ridiculous

 

[Marat]

It's amazing that Luke Murray didn't even play D1 basketball, correct? He was just a high school player, I believe.

 

[metsfan2323]

He does a lot of ball screens. Not nearly the level of off ball screens the men run lately.

Ok, we have common ground. At the end of the day the philosophies are very similar, it's like two children, brother and sister who look an awful lot alike.

 

[Chin Diesel]

After the loss to New Mexico in the NCAAT Hurley decided we needed to focus and ramp up our offense. So he hired Luke Murray and recruited offensive talent.

Without reading through the rest of the comments, this is it.

And recruiting the players with the IQ and desire to share the ball.

 

[superjohn]

With all due respect, not at all.

Some of our fans are embarrassing.

 

[jibsey]

Question. Opposing teams have seen our offense for 2 full seasons now, what are the chances they figure out how to defend it?

 

[uconnfan68]

I’m genuinely a bit curious/confused at what you think the similarities are.

Both are read-react offenses. They have options for everything. The team chemistry allows them to be on the same page.

 

[NJHoops]

Luke Murray might be the smartest basketball mind in the country and I’m not being hyperbolic about that. Tom Moore is the best rebounding coach in the country. And Kimani and Hurley are both X’s and O’s geniuses as well. This staff is just ridiculous

As much as people complain about the changes in the game (NIL, easy transferring), they are also, in a way, helping this staff stay together. Those somewhat lower level jobs that Luke and Kimani would be up for are getting harder to win at. So, they stay, win, and are well-compensated while they wait for the perfect spot. Everybody wins!

 

[uconnfan68]

Some of our fans are embarrassing.

What's embarrassing is that you think a Hall of Fame coach has nothing to offer.

 

[bigknight3]

Commenting before reading through the whole thread, but this crossed my mind recently too.

My theory is in addition to hiring Luke Murray and overhauling the offense, does Hurley spend more time in preseason practice installing the offense because it's so complex and then focuses on defensive rotations and adjustments throughout the season.

We've seen average defenders improve as the season goes along (Joey and Cam), and we have more time to work on those things during the cupcake portion of the schedule when we have a physical advantage against opponents.

I feel like previously Hurley used to be defense first and foremost and he'd work on the offense as we went along. Has that been flipped to support the new offense?

Has that been written about or does anyone have insight to add to this theory?

 

[LIuconn]

I doubted Hurley in the first couple of years. Even in his pressers after the rock fights he spoke in the cliches of the players needing to be tougher, to 'want it more,' etc. I didn't see this type of offensive transition happening. It's been truly incredible

 

[UC15]

After the loss to New Mexico in the NCAAT Hurley decided we needed to focus and ramp up our offense. So he hired Luke Murray and recruited offensive talent.

Luke Murray was brought in after 20-21 season before the loss the New Mexico state

 

[Chin Diesel]

Question. Opposing teams have seen our offense for 2 full seasons now, what are the chances they figure out how to defend it?

That's the beauty of this offense. You can know what UConn is doing but defending it for 30 seconds almost always leads to opens shots. UConn would get the clock down to 5 seconds, make two more passes and get off a great shot with 0.5 seconds on the clock.

 

[Waquoit]

Getting players in the program that can make a shot helped tremendously.

 

[Inyatkin]

Some of our fans are embarrassing.

Keep throwing those laugh-crying emojis on every mention of Geno, that'll show 'em

 

[McLovin]

2 things happened.

1, one of the most stubborn coaches in college basketball admitted he needed to change his “we can win on defense alone” approach

2, he hired Luke Murray who is an offensive genius, probably the best offensive mind in college basketball. Honestly, I cannot believe that a team hasn’t hired him as a HC. I know running a program top to bottom is different than just being a recruiter and designing the offense, but damn we are lucky he is sticking around another season.

 

[superjohn]

Keep throwing those laugh-crying emojis on every mention of Geno, that'll show 'em

Take it to the women's board.

 

[Tenspro2002]

After the loss to New Mexico in the NCAAT Hurley decided we needed to focus and ramp up our offense. So he hired Luke Murray and recruited offensive talent.

It's not entirely in that order though.

We already had Karaban in the fold at that point, so Hurley had clearly identified the need to go more modern at the 4 position in contrast to a more traditional PF like Whaley.

 

[Inyatkin]

Take it to the women's board.

You are an odd dude

 

[McLovin]

Getting players in the program that can make a shot helped tremendously.

No doubt but that team that lost to New Mexico State had Hawkins, Cole, Martin and Polley who were all above average or better shooters. We just didn’t utilize them properly (Martin was actually a very very good 3 point shooter his senior year - 43% on over 3 attempts per game - and we ran nothing to get him open looks).

 

[Tenspro2002]

Yes, all of the above. Recruiting putting more emphasis on BBIQ and arrival of guys who were just as tough as old Hurley recruits, but higher BBIQ and more skilled. Hurley and Murray developing a new offense not once, but twice. First year of the revolution was more about Hawkins shooting off movement and setting up deep post touches and seals for Sanogo. 2nd year was building on all that, adding more, and codifying it into more of a system (creating terminology, etc.), and enhancing the plays to get more variations and secondary actions (cuts, rolls, penetration windows etc. on top of everything else.) And then yeah just getting the buy-in to make everything work, though that hasn't really been a problem throughout Hurley's tenure (so not really a recent change).

We forget that at the beginning of his tenure, Hurley had to devote basically his entire coaching to effort and toughness. Forget BBIQ, forget sophisticated plays, he had his hands full getting guys to give max effort all game.

 

[Staven]

With everything that has been said in these posts which I also agree with I think its important that UConn needs to do whatever they need to do to keep this coaching staff intact. I'm sure the addition of Murray has helped the offense immensely, but the chemistry between ALL the coaches is just as important and keeping them together should be a priority.

 

[Scoe]

Adding shooting, we added Joey C, Newton, Alleyne, Karaban and let’s not forget Hawkins missed the tournament in 2022 that really hurt us.

 

[Tenspro2002]

No doubt but that team that lost to New Mexico State had Hawkins, Cole, Martin and Polley who were all above average or better shooters. We just didn’t utilize them properly (Martin was actually a very very good 3 point shooter his senior year - 43% on over 3 attempts per game - and we ran nothing to get him open looks).

The problem was we had so few shooters on the floor at a time that if we tried running plays for shooters, it was so obvious what we were doing that the best we got was contested Polley spot-up 3s, which were incredibly demoralizing when he missed.

 

[gsmooth]

Kittles lit us up at Gampel for about 37 or so, too.

Unfortunately I was at this game in 1995. It was the first week every UConn got ranked #1 in the country and it was such a big deal. Then Kittles lit up Ray Allen and the Huskies for 37 while Ray only had 11. Nova beat UConn 96-73.