Yes this. I do think Dan is the right guy here at UConn but I really don't like how he points out how low we were when he took over the program. Every. Single. Presser. Stop passing the buck and take some ownership.
"The buck stops here."
-Harry Truman's desk
He had a couple of years where he could make this argument.
Now any players in the program he either initially recruited or re-recruited not as courtesy or culture.
I like Hurley. This team had a ton of injuries over the last two years that lowered the ceiling both in terms of development and adaptability. Gaffney, Akok, Polley, Bouknight, and Jackson all have missed a ton of time and for Jackson this year and Gaff last, it really hurt them in multiple ways.
As a whole, Hurley had a few conflicting problems: he could run off the entire team and try to start from scratch, or he can build from within. In building from within he had talented players like Adams and Gilbert and CV and then a bunch of A10 players. He took that route, and he got the most out of those A10 players, by and large, but the team lacked athleticism. He had to solve that and we're
almost there. But still, he had to recruit in some transfers who could paper over some other problems (namely PG), and he had to over-recruit bigs a bit because we had no interior depth.
We also had no real shooting. But Akok, Bouk, and Gaffney, we hoped, could provide enough. That was part of what Cole was going to bring as well.
This team should have had a higher seed (without the Bouknight injury, 3-4), but would have still had the problem of not playing a lot of good teams and not having big game experience.
All those excuses are gone, though.
