New! Dan Hurley on CT Scoreboard Pod

[gwhuskyfan]

Coach Hurley joins the pod for his annual preseason episode. We talk a lot about player development and guys adapting to new roles, leadership needed from Alex and Hass, transfer impacts, and more.

Watch:

 

[gwhuskyfan]

Listen:

 

[Ricker]

Some points I took away from a solid interview. Glad to hear that the center position won't be an issue that holds the team back in spite of the improvements that Reed needs to make and the limitations we acknowledge with Samson Johnson. Ross is real and is legitimately in the top 7. It is clear he doesn't love the idea of Diarra and Mahaney in the back court together based on their size. Obviously, there will be matchups where they will play together with no issue, but It will be interesting against some matchups whether he puts a wing on the court at times when Solo is out. If he has any concerns, it is in the backcourt, (I would have thought center). I got the impression he still wasn't much concerned with the backcourt, just had to answer the question. Thanks Jared

 

[auror]

Yeah Hurley saying all 3 sophomores are in the top 6 or 7 is my most interesting takeaway. Maybe he misspoke, but that would put 2 of McNeeley, Diarra, Mahaney, or Reed at #8-9 in the rotation. 1 is likely Reed, which would mean Johnson is getting a healthy serving of minutes. But whomever is left being 8th from that group would be extremely surprising.

 

[Ricker]

Jared also anointed Diarra as the starter and Hurley walked that back a bit to 'if he is the starter'.

 

[auror]

Jared also anointed Diarra as the starter and Hurley walked that back a bit to 'if he is the starter'.

That one is less surprising to me because there's been a lot of "4 spots up for grabs still" talk the last 2 weeks (like the Rothstein tweets, for example). But yeah taken in conjunction with the 3 sophs in top 6/7 and him saying he doesn't want to play a lot of Diarra+Mahaney together, it sure sounds like 1 of Mahaney/Diarra is going to be the 8th man this year, which seems impossible.

 

[RuffRuff]

In the spirit of seeing the competing fanbase POV of Hurley and his system:

UConn Practice Video

I’m amazed at the all-out energy and laser focus of this guy. He honestly might be the best (most demanding) coach in America today. Or he might be nuts. You decide. The one thing I’d bet is true, Woody doesn’t go quite this hard. Listen carefully to his comment about coaching until 65 just so...

indiana.forums.rivals.com

 

[navery12]

There's 2 ways to read into those comments on the sophomores. Either McNeeley is the 8th man currently, which wouldn't be terribly shocking given he's hurt. And would last all of 2 weeks and would not be concerning, he's really good.

The other option is Mahaney or Diarra are the 8th man. Given what we've seen from both of them already at the college level, they're really good players.

Either way, this team is going to be really really good

 

[Lambeau]

The way I make sense of this is that Diarra and Mahaney will share PG duty a la Reed/Samson, as they did against Rhode Island.
Then the "Wings and 4" as he puts it, are the 3 sophomores plus Alex and McNeeley (who can't be excluded since he's called him the best freshman he's ever seen) sharing 120 min=24 min each. No, the math doesn't add up to a seven man rotation.
But there's a lot of mouths to feed.