UConn's Season a 'Huge Success' - Dan Hurley | Page 2 | The Boneyard

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

nelsonmuntz said:
You mean from the last coach, who won a National Championship?
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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.
 
WeAreUCONN said:
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.
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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.
 
Dooooooomed said:
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.
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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.
 
8893 said:
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.
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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.
 
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nelsonmuntz said:
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.
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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?
 
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nelsonmuntz said:
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.
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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.
 
HuskyHawk said:
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.
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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.
 
tjc1888 said:
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.
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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.
 
Tenspro2002 said:
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.
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Yup. The guy has stated literally hundreds of times since his hire how special UConn is and how expectations are different here.
 
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Chin Diesel said:
Well, I sure hope Dan Hurley 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.
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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.
 
tjc1888 said:
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?
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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.
 
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.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
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.
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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.
 
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Tenspro2002 said:
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.
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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.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
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.
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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.
 
Tenspro2002 said:
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.
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Back in 2013, I predicted EXACTLY what would happen to the football and basketball programs if we stayed in the AAC, while everyone still loved Ollie and Pasqualoni. I said the league was going to destroy the athletic program, and that is exactly what it did.

You have no idea what Ollie would have done if we had left with the Catholic schools back in 2013, as we should have. I think we would have been a perennial tournament team and Ollie would have been very successful. We would have recruited better and not had the exodus that happened in 2015-2016.
 
Chin Diesel said:
Well, I sure hope Dan Hurley 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.
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Also for context, remember the George Mason game? We had Boone, Armstrong, Adrien and none of them could stop some 6 ft 7 stocky dude down low. I think we can all agree that those 3 guys werent chopped liver. That was during our streak of leading the NCAA in blocked shots I believe. Things happen during the course of a game. Sometimes its just someones day.
 
tjc1888 said:
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.
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What year did Ollie finish in the basement?
 
nelsonmuntz said:
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.
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He didn't last because he started mailing it in and either didn't know how or didn't care about running a college basketball program. Turning his back on his mentor and the guy who gave him the job was unwise to say the least.
 
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UCfor3 said:
When you can reconcile the fact that this season was about more than how far we went in the NCAA tourney, then you can understand his comment. We are not reestablished yet as national power where we can only be measured by the end result. We are still climbing that mountain. This year was another step. Some of our fanbase wants it yesterday but it doesn't happen that way in reality. It needs to be built and there may be bumps in the road along the way. Some just aren't prepared for that. The program was in pretty bad shape. It's trending up. Some will understand this. Others will pitch a fit and be impatient, sometimes unreasonably so.
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Could not agree more.
 
tjc1888 said:
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.
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Seriously.

The Vance Jackson class in 2016-17 was our 4th year in the AAC and was extremely highly rated. It turns out every single one of those guys was a bust, except Vital, because Ollie was a lazy recruiter and couldn't develop players.
 
superjohn said:
He didn't last because he started mailing it in and either didn't know how or didn't care about running a college basketball program. Turning his back on his mentor and the guy who gave him the job was unwise to say the least.
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I agree 100% that Ollie mailed it in his last season. I wonder if he knew he was getting fired.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Back in 2013, I predicted EXACTLY what would happen to the football and basketball programs if we stayed in the AAC, while everyone still loved Ollie and Pasqualoni. I said the league was going to destroy the athletic program, and that is exactly what it did.

You have no idea what Ollie would have done if we had left with the Catholic schools back in 2013, as we should have. I think we would have been a perennial tournament team and Ollie would have been very successful. We would have recruited better and not had the exodus that happened in 2015-2016.
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The exodus was in 2017, after our 4th year in the AAC, and after we had a top 10 (maybe even top 5, I don't remember) recruiting class. On paper, it was a terrific class. On the court, they were terrible.

They left because they recognized Ollie was a fraud, not because of the conference.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
What year did Ollie finish in the basement?
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This is such a weird hill to die on. This was the year we brought that top 5 class in. 16-17 and 9-9 in the American conference lol.

Oh, and I'll mention that Brimah, Adams, Facey and Purvis were still on that team. Imagine having a losing record with that.
 
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