Hurley threads (merged)

[Scoe]

Xavier, Marquette, Creighton and Providence are a combined 1-10 vs “Top Half” teams this year during away games. So are Miller, Smart, McDermott, & Cooley on the hot seat too?

All those coaches have been to the sweet 16 just saying.

 

[Stinger92860]

Now?

Yes now, I was holding out but I am coming over to the dark side...

He did run that one play for the AK three…

On AJ I‘ve been down on his shooting stroke since he got here. I just don‘t understand how any coach could let this happen. I’ve coached girls and I saw it in that game where they told the very athletic girls to always drive the length of the court and they never developed outside shots. What a shame.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Xavier, Marquette, Creighton and Providence are a combined 1-10 vs “Top Half” teams this year during away games. So are Miller, Smart, McDermott, & Cooley on the hot seat too?

Did they lose to St. Johns at home too?

 

[SportsFan88]

I’ve always been a big Hurley guy since he took over our program, but even I can admit that 2-21 on the road is deeply troubling, it’s actually horrid. Another 1st round exit this march and it’s gonna be DEEP PROBLEMS

 

[wheelerdog]

Why bother having a coach? They don’t do anything to impact the game or player development.

Don't rag on player development. The Wrench being example 1A. Vital also saw a hugh jump, and Hawkins had gotten much better

 

[wheelerdog]

Let's face it. The success of this season gets decided between March 16-19.

 

[uconngb]

By all means let's fire Hurley with 4 years and 11 million left on his contract. It's comical to think that Hurley is going anywhere no matter how much you think he sucks.

Sleeping cat memes are the perfect response to your inane boring blather.

Yes let’s just keep an ineffective coach because we owe him $$. That’s a winning approach.

 

[Scoe]

Let's face it. The success of this season gets decided between March 16-19.

For sure it’s put up or shut up.

 

[Doctor Hoop]

Yes now, I was holding out but I am coming over to the dark side...

He did run that one play for the AK three…

On AJ I‘ve been down on his shooting stroke since he got here. I just don‘t understand how any coach could let this happen. I’ve coached girls and I saw it in that game where they told the very athletic girls to always drive the length of the court and they never developed outside shots. What a shame.

My reply was flippant, but even going back as far as the search for a new coach I expressed doubts about Hurley’s x’s & o’s. And when he had lesser players he did what he’s doing now, what he’s always done. That’s play his standard defense and standard man offense, without much variation, and rely on the talent to make a play. Obviously that works better with better talent.

But it’s not infallible as Calipari can tell you. The more creative coaches will have several ways to get the guys they want shooting their shots. He’s not a bad coach, but he’s not a creative one. And that’s something that becomes important down the stretch of a tight game.

Can he get a bit more creative on both ends? Add that to the solid recruiting, and the motivation for high effort that he inspires? Let’s hope so.

 

[LIuconn]

Hurley hasn't and won't be one to out-tactic his opponent. The truth is coming out in the wash in realtime.
His athletes beat the bottom half of the conference and the good coaches beat his teams. Time and time again

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

Don't rag on player development. The Wrench being example 1A. Vital also saw a hugh jump, and Hawkins had gotten much better

Those weren’t his recruits and I’m not sure if Hawkins has gotten much better or he just actually got a chance to play this year.

I will say Sanogo has played MUCH better these last couple of games. But he’s missing on A LOT of the guys he’s identifying and responsible for developing out of high school. Andre Jackson being the most glaring lack of development.

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

The main problem with Hurley may be that he is not a proactive coach. He doesn’t coach his star players very hard. He’s slow to make adjustments until it’s blatantly obvious that they need to be made.

It seems hurts in close games because he doesn’t seem to see things coming. Just reacts to what happens and “play his game.”

It’s February and the team still doesn’t seem to know what their roles are. Joey C is a complete non factor after being one of our best bench players at the beginning of the year and we seem to do nothing to try and get his game going again. Meanwhile Diarra is good for 2-3 boneheaded plays a game. There’s no way he should be running the point over Joey C.

 

[Hi-Low]

Yes let’s just keep an ineffective coach because we owe him $$. That’s a winning approach.

Hurley is a good coach that has brought some stability back to the program. We have a great class coming in AND THIS year is far from being over.

 

[coachn]

My biggest complaint is DH not being able to use Clingan effectively. He's a monster and he gets 7 minutes? Need him especially on defense.
DC could make the biggest impact than any other player.
Did you see how open it was down low when AS moved out to take his 3s?

 

[DMIL]

There wasn’t a single minute during this game that I thought we would win.

If it’s close late, I figured we would be outplayed in the final minutes and we were.

We’re better at losing games we’re supposed to win than we are at winning games we’re favored to lose.

In recruiting Dan Hurley has not been able to close on an elite point guard. This is what has been missing from his teams here at UCONN. Until then you can expect the same.

 

[tentoes4rings]

Idiots can't even appreciate a tough road loss. They can only be angry

Damn Karens, they'll never grow up

We lose EVERY road game against good teams on the road Willie so enough of your slamming other posters crap. Maybe people like you have just developed low standards and are content with tough losses, they can’t continue to lose every single close road game.

 

[tentoes4rings]

I’m frustrated with Hurley too but the team was just firing up bricks tonight. Historically though we’re not a good team when we’re over reliant on three point shots. Tonight they got off SEVENTEEN more shots and still lost, that’s almost hard to comprehend. Went 7-27 from theee tonight, 4-20 as a team other than our center. When the team faces a tough defense, game after game they just settle for contested threes while Creighton and other teams get to the line a lot more by taking it to the rim. As a result we were outscored by 9 at the line, a troubling trend in almost every loss.

 

[mauconnfan]

Hurley can't shoot the ball or make passes. Not his fault players did not execute and Jackson was a human turn over machine. 26% shooting will loose every game. Players have to play better it's that simple.

Wait who decided to let Jackson play so many minutes? Please people here are hilarious.

 

[caw]

		UCONN	Creighton	Providence	Xavier	Seton Hall	Marquette
Q3/4 Games	ALL	11-1	9-1	13-0	8-1	9-1	12-0
OOC
	Q1/Q2 (N)	3-0	2-3	0-2	1-2	1-1	0-1
	Q1/Q2 (H)	1-0	0-0	0-0	1-1	0-1	1-1
	Q1/Q2 (A)	1-0	0-1	0-1	1-0	1-1	0-1
BE
	Q1/Q2 (H)	2-1	4-0	2-0	5-0	1-3	4-0
	Q1/Q2 (A)	1-5	2-3	4-3	4-1	2-3	3-3
BET
NCAAT

UConn can't win on the road against the other teams in the top 6 of the BE. Now of course you may be wondering, why are four of those teams undefeated at home against top competition in conference but have road wins against Q1/Q2 in conference.

PC's four road wins come against Butler, SHU, SJU and Nova
Creighton's two against Butler and SHU
Marquette's against SJU, SHU and Nova
X's against Butler, Nova and SJU (and yes UConn)
SHU's two against Butler and SJU

Basically the top four are undefeated at home against the other five in the top six. UConn has lost once to X and SHU has lost to all their tough home games except UConn (put back away from being 0-fer).

So people are correct that UConn has been really bad on the road this year in the BE, but pulling back so has every other top BE team except X. And the only big difference right now is UConn's one point loss to SHU from UConn having the same road record as the top four teams in the BE. Now maybe that's a bit of poor coaching on the coaches, or maybe it's a mix of a ton of factors including luck.

Who knows what will happen going forward from here but UConn hasn't been as bad as it appears. Winning at Creighton (or any of the top 6 not named SHU) would have been a true aberration not just for UConn but for the entire top of the BE.

It wouldn't shock me if X ends the BE season with the only road win against the group of UConn/X/PC/Creighton/Marquette.

I am not discussing the SJU loss as this is a discussion about road wins.

 

[willie99]

We lose EVERY road game against good teams on the road Willie so enough of your slamming other posters crap. Maybe people like you have just developed low standards and are content with tough losses, they can’t continue to lose every single close road game.

It was a tough road loss against one of the best teams in the country who happens to be playing great. That's not a bad thing in any world

There were people here complaining after we rolled Marquette, no joke

This board has become a microcosm of the modern day WWE for so many, always complaining, never happy about anything anywhere.

The vitriolic behavior towards Hurley and /or our kids is both nauseating and redicously stupid. Debbie Downers and Karens are people nobody wants to be around.

We're having a great year, the program is absolutely moving in the right direction, it's time to see the forest through the trees

Great game Huskies, thank you

 

[Hey Adrien!]

I'm not in the fire Hurley camp, but I think the trend here of rarely ever beating >.500 teams on the road is troubling. As well as losing games that are decided by less than 5 points.

A sweet 16 likely makes up for all of it.

Sums up my sentiment too.

I entered the year very open-minded about Hurley but if we struggle in the BET and the tourney no one would be more disappointed than Hurley himself .

In that scenario, firing him this off-season would be stupid but his seat, and Hurley would agree justifiably so, would definitely be warm.

IMO, he’s recruited too well to give up on him. I want to see the ‘22 and ‘23 classes together for at least one season.

 

[pj]

People hate this stat, but Calhoun was 38-21 in his first 5 seasons at UConn in games decided by 6 points of fewer (2 possession games). Hurley is 13-30.

Granted, this stat doesnt count for the games where its close with 5 mins left and we go on a run, but I don’t think that happens enough to excuse the 13-30 record when its close in the final seconds. It’s my #1 issue with Hurley right now. We seem to always find ways to lose rather than finding ways to win when its close at the very end

It does seem like the biggest difference between Calhoun and Hurley. Both could recruit, develop, and motivate players. But Calhoun was a winner through and through - whatever it took to win, he had it. Hurley is missing some key ingredient. I hope he can develop it but his trajectory seems slow. It's unfair to be compared to Calhoun of course, but that's the comparison that comes to hand when you coach at UConn.

 

[zls44]

Jim Calhoun: one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport, can be reasonably argued to be the best.

The Boneyard: why isn't Dan Hurley as good as Jim Calhoun. Its simple! Just be that guy!

I think the close games thing will end up like "why can't JC make a Final Four?" Eventually it'll happen and then it'll be fine. But until it does, everyone is gonna be big mad about it, even though its clearly just random noise.

 

[tennmike]

Hurley is stuck. His teams historically have played slow and regardless of the circumstance, he appears resistant to change. One advantage that the team should have had against Creighton is depth. They needed to push the pace and wear the Creighton starters out and I was anxious to see it play out.

Instead, Newton's walking the ball up the court from the very start of the game, Some say that he wasn't aggressive, but then Diarra did the same thing...even going so far as to look back at the coach during the walk to see what to run. Must have pleased McDermott that Hurley did not want to speed things up.

Okay, so we're not going to play fast. As been hammered here, playing slow mucks things up with Jackson being exposed in the half court.

And then there's Clingan. Even the announcers were taken back during one episode and said something to the extent..."whoa, this guy is going to be dangerous!" I get that Sanogo was playing great, so get them both in their for a time. Seven minutes for Clingan is nuts! He creates a mismatch.

Hurley has a great basketball lineage, a great recruiter, seems liked by the players, and is a good culture guy. He brings a ton to the table, but there are some obvious chinks in the armor that act as a governor limiting the upside and that is hard to ignore.

 

[aburks41]

Jim Calhoun: one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport, can be reasonably argued to be the best.

The Boneyard: why isn't Dan Hurley as good as Jim Calhoun. Its simple! Just be that guy!

I think the close games thing will end up like "why can't JC make a Final Four?" Eventually it'll happen and then it'll be fine. But until it does, everyone is gonna be big mad about it, even though its clearly just random noise.

I don’t expect Hurley to be as good as Calhoun, who in my opinion is the GOAT. But the people excusing the fact that our teams rarely win those close games just makes no sense to me. It’s an issue and Hurley needs to find ways to make the team execute better. We played a damn near perfect final 2 minutes against Georgetown last week and won. That was a rare thing considering we are 13-30 in 2 possession games. There is no excuse to be THAT bad. Being .500, okay. Having a 33% win rate? Terrible.

Look at any of the coaches in Hurleys peer group (McDermott, Cooley, Smart, Oats, Musselman, etc) and their records in close games. Hurley stands alone, and not in a good way. He can shut everyone up by getting to a S16 this season, but his seat will be flaming hot if we get bounced in the first round again. Going into year 6 with 0 tournament wins is not meeting the expectations for a coach at UConn.

And for the record, I still believe this team has the pieces to make a deep run. We suck on away courts, but we’re pretty damn good on neutrals.