Hurley’s Deepest UConn Team

[HW611]

Ajax could not only guard 1-3, but also caused a ton of havoc on the defensive end and was a big part of the motor that made us go. If you think about that team, there weren't a ton of great individual defenders outside of Jax (we did have length). Newt wasn't an amazing defender, nor was Hawkins or Karaban. I wouldn't have called Adama a force on defense either. Amazing what one high plus perimeter defender can do.

We need to find a couple plus defenders on this roster (that aren't major offensive liabilities). I'm pretty high on Mullins potential on defense, really light on his feet/springy. Just need to see it with my eyes at this level. Silas looks strong and like he has some dawg in him. Maybe the Ross experiment pans out - as someone said so accurately, he was high energy, but bad defensively last year (as all metrics show). Can that high energy & length translate this year?

The team was mostly bigger faster and stronger than everyone else. We had a 6’5 PG and a legit 2 way NBA 2 guard in Hawkins and then Andre. Size wise and athletically, there was no one in the country matching up against us on the perimeter.

Add in Sanogo being a brick house and Clingan off the bench, we were just physically better than everyone else and asserted our will.

It’s not the same this year as the only position we’ll have a clear physical advantage is PG. Solo will be small for a 2G and Mullins will be smaller for a 3.

It’s why I’m pushing for Ross so hard because he helps us get a size an athletic advantage at that 3 spot (and why I push for PG Solo because he’s an athletic advantage there and a disadvantage as a 2). Not going back and forth about this but he looked like one of our best defenders once he started staying on his feet during the second half of the season. Don’t really care what the metrics say when I watched something closely with my own eyes.

Mullins played a lot of 2-3 defense in HS I think so I assume they’ll be a learning curve on understanding Hurley’s man defense.

 

[Scottobot]

I think this is Hurley’s deepest team since he became UConn’s head coach. It seems we are at least two deep at every position. If Furphy steps up and becomes a Swiss Army knife with his positional size we have 10 players who would play more than mop up minutes on all but a handful of Division one teams. If you go back and look it may have been situational but during the 22-23 we had nine players average more than 12 minutes per game. Will that happen again this year?

Like many others said, hard to know who is going to end up being really good until they play. Hurley has done a great job the last 3-4 years filling the roster with players that could be great.

Last year I thought for sure Mahaney and Nowell would be good, but that didn’t happen.

 

[prankster]

Not for nothin....But, this is the first season, ever, where we have enjoyed 15 player roster.

That has to count for something.