UConn's Season a 'Huge Success' - Dan Hurley

[Huskybass]

You mean from the coach who we went 16-17 and 14-18 with his last 2 years?

And burned the program to the ground!

 

[BlueDogs]

Not a good sign. How about “we made great progress on reaching our first goal. But, we are disappointed we didn’t perform at the level we expect of ourselves in the tournament. We are going to redouble our efforts to get to the next level.” Instead, unnecessary hyperbole.

 

[UConnSwag11]

I'd call it a disappointing ending to a hugely successful season. With that said, the definition of a hugely successful season changes next year.

 

[Tenspro2002]

Dan Hurley: UConn’s season "a huge success"

The Huskies took a tumble in the NCAA Tournament, but overall Hurley was proud of the team in his third season as coach.

www.theuconnblog.com

I love Hurley. I love what he's done with the program, the players he's recruited, the energy he brings night in and night out. But anyone else get irked by statements like this? Any season that ends with a first round exit from the NCAA tournament is not a success. There will be posters here that say just making the tournament was enough to warrant calling the season a success, but since when have we ever done that?

I get its early in the rebuild, that he needs a bit more time, but sometimes I feel like Hurley still operates with that small time URI, Wagner mentality. I also understand he's looking for silver linings and at the larger picture, but to call this season a success just feels wrong, but maybe I'm crazy.

Anyways, love the guy and hope that next year goes a little better than this year did.

His audience isn't always the fans, sometimes it's the players.

He's still building these guys up and doesn't want the returning players to feel like he's throwing them under the bus.

If he were being totally candid I'm sure he'd say that he expected to achieve more with this group.

 

[WeAreUCONN]

You mean from the last coach, who won a National Championship?

Napier, Boat and the rest of the team won that title. Based on what I saw Ollie do after that title. I ain’t giving him any credit. How bout that.

 

[Lefty2one]

I could not care less about coachspeak to the media.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Napier, Boat and the rest of the team won that title. Based on what I saw Ollie do after that title. I ain’t giving him any credit. How bout that.

A career NBA backup and a bunch of guys that never played a second in the League beat Wright, Hoiberg, Izzo, Donovan and Calipari and Ollie had nothing to do with it. Got it.

 

[8893]

Napier, Boat and the rest of the team won that title. Based on what I saw Ollie do after that title. I ain’t giving him any credit. How bout that.

That would be as wrong as blaming Ollie for Ayala’s performance against us last night.

 

[bendm]

I'd call it a disappointing ending to a hugely successful season. With that said, the definition of a hugely successful season changes next year.

agreed. if you told me before the season we'd get ranked in the top 25, finish 3rd in the BE, make it to the BET semis, and earn an at large bid i would have taken it in a heartbeat.

 

[HuskyHawk]

This season was progress. We all hoped for more, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful in terms of making steady progress towards our goal.

I don’t think I would call it a “huge” success, but that’s quibbling and he wouldn’t be the first coach to engage in puffery when defending his record.

And honestly, it’s an asterisk season. None of us knows how it would have played out as a normal season, with fans, with a normal number of games. Our postseason failure (and it was a failure, both BET and NCAA), was far from the worst failure, among several programs.

There is excitement again. We need to build on that. The players, the staff, the fans.

 

[tjc1888]

A career NBA backup and a bunch of guys that never played a second in the League beat Wright, Hoiberg, Izzo, Donovan and Calipari and Ollie had nothing to do with it. Got it.

Come on man enough of this.....I know you love Ollie. But NBA success has literally zero to do with winning national championships. If it did, Duke and Kentucky would be playing each other every year in the finals.

I’m sure a lineup of matthews kisunas MAL, Whaley Polley and Carleton would have would have won us a ton of games this year.

Ollie was a train wreck. He had one good month with the best backcourt in the country. Including the best player in the country. This Ollie vs Hurley argument has been put to bed. We are light years ahead of where we would be with Ollie at this point.

In all honesty, where do you think we would be right now if Ollie is the coach?

 

[HuskyHawk]

A career NBA backup and a bunch of guys that never played a second in the League beat Wright, Hoiberg, Izzo, Donovan and Calipari and Ollie had nothing to do with it. Got it.

Didn‘t like him as a coach. Never wanted him hired. But he did that. He also knew how to switch from man to zone when the situation called for it. I think Hurley is a great recruiter, a good judge of talent and a guy who really needs some humility. He had his ass handed to him several times this year.

That doesn’t mean he’s not a good coach. Bruce Arians utterly out coached Andy Reid recently. I’m hoping we see Hurley adapt and grow.

 

[tjc1888]

Didn‘t like him as a coach. Never wanted him hired. But he did that. He also knew how to switch from man to zone when the situation called for it. I think Hurley is a great recruiter, a good judge of talent and a guy who really needs some humility. He had his ass handed to him several times this year.

That doesn’t mean he’s not a good coach. Bruce Arians utterly out coached Andy Reid recently. I’m hoping we see Hurley adapt and grow.

What do you call Ollie get pummeled by Tulsa and SMU by 20 4x a year and losing to Wagner and Northeastern. Doesn’t seem like switching from man to zone helped in those games.

 

[Tenspro2002]

The only reason someone should be concerned is if they think Hurley genuinely feels "this is an acceptable average long-term result for this program".

There's no way you can conclude that based on the rest of his comments.

 

[HuskyHawk]

What do you call Ollie get pummeled by Tulsa and SMU by 20 4x a year and losing to Wagner and Northeastern. Doesn’t seem like switching from man to zone helped in those games.

Because he was a lousy recruiter and bad talent evaluator. Thats 3/4 of what a college coach does. He clearly lost the team and was not developing guys at all. But while I never wanted to hire him, pre divorce Ollie was >>>>>> post divorce Ollie.

 

[selles]

The only reason someone should be concerned is if they think Hurley genuinely feels "this is an acceptable average long-term result for this program".

There's no way you can conclude that based on the rest of his comments.

Yup. The guy has stated literally hundreds of times since his hire how special UConn is and how expectations are different here.

 

[UCfor3]

Well, I sure hope DH has a plan to find someone on the roster capable of guarding a 6'5" shooting guard or small forward. Turns out plenty of D1 teams have a player of that size and skillset.

Asking any of those players listed- Martin, Bouk or Jackson shouldn't be a stretch. You could also try Gaff, who while shorter, seems to be a more physical defensive presence than Bouk.

He tried them all. Ayala was hard to handle. Give the kid credit instead of blaming the coach. He went off. It happens. It has happenned before to us and will happen again.

 

[businesslawyer]

Napier, Boat and the rest of the team won that title. Based on what I saw Ollie do after that title. I ain’t giving him any credit. How bout that.

You can do that. It makes you look like an idiot, but that’s up to you.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Come on man enough of this.....I know you love Ollie. But NBA success has literally zero to do with winning national championships. If it did, Duke and Kentucky would be playing each other every year in the finals.

I’m sure a lineup of matthews kisunas MAL, Whaley Polley and Carleton would have would have won us a ton of games this year.

Ollie was a train wreck. He had one good month with the best backcourt in the country. Including the best player in the country. This Ollie vs Hurley argument has been put to bed. We are light years ahead of where we would be with Ollie at this point.

In all honesty, where do you think we would be right now if Ollie is the coach?

Worth a separate thread, but Ollie got taken down by our conference as much as anything. No coach could survive that drop in conference affiliation without problems. People act as if the league didn't lose most of its best basketball teams.

No program in college history has ever survived a major step down in conference affiliation without it killing the program. Hurley had the opposite, with UConn making a major step up in conference affiliation just as Hurley was arriving.

 

[XLCenterFan]

There’s various perspectives. I’ll take this year as a success as part of the rebuild. I will not take this year as success looking at where we should be consistently. Danny has done his job so far. Everyone complaining about making the dance and losing should just think back to when we were getting buried by 20+ points in the AAC.

 

[Tenspro2002]

Worth a separate thread, but Ollie got taken down by our conference as much as anything. No coach could survive that drop in conference affiliation without problems. People act as if the league didn't lose most of its best basketball teams.

No program in college history has ever survived a major step down in conference affiliation without it killing the program. Hurley had the opposite, with UConn making a major step up in conference affiliation just as Hurley was arriving.

I mean, that completely ignores the fact that Hurley had last year's team on an upward and Tournament-ready trajectory before the season got canceled, while in the AAC, and with most of those players having been recruited before the BE announcement.

The BE will help Hurley, but he also had this thing going in the right direction regardless.

Similarly, KO would have ____ed things up even if we had stayed in the Big East, and it probably would have been more apparent sooner.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Success. What more do we want? Third place big east. NCAA bid. UConn played poorly in the NCAAs. What ya gonna do?

 

[SeattleHoop]

The only reason someone should be concerned is if they think Hurley genuinely feels "this is an acceptable average long-term result for this program".

There's no way you can conclude that based on the rest of his comments.

Most the people criticizing this statement probably didn’t watch his entire press conference.

He clearly stated that he expects to do better going forward but he’s also happy with where they have came.

I don’t get it. Do people here want him to hang his head and dwell on the loss?? He knows it could have been better but he is looking at how far he the program has come overall.
He has to be positive with his head up and move on and that’s what he’s doing.

 

[tjc1888]

Worth a separate thread, but Ollie got taken down by our conference as much as anything. No coach could survive that drop in conference affiliation without problems. People act as if the league didn't lose most of its best basketball teams.

No program in college history has ever survived a major step down in conference affiliation without it killing the program. Hurley had the opposite, with UConn making a major step up in conference affiliation just as Hurley was arriving.

A drop in conference alignment would directly correlate with recruiting.

Your comment ignores the fact he always had the most highly regarded recruits on the roster (top 100) in the AAC in the first few years and would finish in the basement. He either couldn’t develop or couldn’t coach. Two of the most important things in being a college basketball coach.

It wasn’t until recruits realized he couldn’t do those things and add in the fact that he got lazy, then he started not being able to recruit, and what you blame on conference. I blame on the coach’s ability/effort.