When Dan Hurley and the UConn men’s basketball team departed Wednesday for Fort Worth, Texas from Hartford, Conn., they figured they could create a little March Madness of their own.
The Huskies had won five straight games to end the regular season in the American Athletic Conference and stood at 19-12, 10-8 in league play heading into the conference tournament in Texas.
With a deep run there, Hurley and his team figured they might get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Then reality set in.
The American, like every other conference across the nation, canceled its postseason tournament on Thursday amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“They’re obviously disappointed but mostly shocked and stunned,” Hurley, the 47-year-old Jersey City native and former Seton Hall standout, said on a conference call. “You couldn’t even say sad because it hasn’t hit home yet. Everyone is shocked, stunned and a little bit frightened.”
The most immediate thing on Hurley’s mind at that point was putting his team on a plane and heading safely back to Connecticut, and getting all of his players safely home. The Huskies flew out on Friday.
“It’s hard to really think about the basketball part of this,” Hurley said. “There’s nothing more important than your health and the well-being of people you care about.”
It wasn’t at the forefront of Hurley’s thinking, but the reality was that he had coached his last game ever in the American Athletic Conference. The next game he coaches will be as a member of the Big East Conference.
UConn is set to re-join the Big East beginning in the 2020-21 season, when the league will have 11 teams in men’s and women’s basketball. Every team in the league will play a 20-game schedule, facing each opponent twice.
That means that Hurley, who also served as an assistant at Rutgers and as the head coach at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark for nine years, will play his alma mater Seton Hall twice, including once at Prudential Center.
UConn will also resume its natural geographic rivalries with Providence, Villanova, St. John’s and Georgetown instead of having to get on planes to play opponents like Tulane, Tulsa, Memphis and Houston.
With UConn’s return to the Big East next season, life on the court will get tougher for the Huskies — six or seven Big East teams were projected to make the NCAA Tournament this year — and for their Big East rivals, too. Especially next March when the Big East Tournament resumes after canceling this year, and UConn fans will once again be free to take over the Garden.
“I haven’t experienced UConn in the Big East Tournament, but I’ve heard the stories,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said last Monday. “It sounds like they really bring a great following to New York City, much like some of our other teams, so I think it’s just going to add to the excitement of that particular event. It’s certainly been good without them, but they’ll certainly add some value to it.”
Pirates coach Kevin Willard said before the season the Big East would be tougher with Hurley coaching in it and that he could no longer recruit against UConn citing its affiliation with the American.
“I can’t tell recruits now, ‘You know what it’s like to play at Tulane, East Carolina, Tulsa and those places?’ That doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “They always have had a great history in this area. It adds a different layer to recruiting, but they were always going to be tough here.”
Villanova Coach Jay Wright, whose team has won two of the last four national men’s basketball titles, said UConn’s return would make the Big East a more “authentic” basketball league.
“Everywhere they go to play, it’s going to be a great game,” Wright said. “And everyone that goes there, you know they’re going to be sold out.”
UConn’s return to the Big East will also mean that Bob Hurley Sr., Dan’s father and the Naismith Hall of Fame coach from St. Anthony’s, will have more opportunities to watch one of his son’s coach. Bobby Hurley, his elder son and the former Duke star, is the coach at Arizona State.
Bob Sr. and his wife Chris can now see UConn play not only at Seton Hall, but against St. John’s at the Garden, and at Providence, Villanova and Georgetown as well as at UConn home games.
“It’s your child,” said Bob Sr., who added that he and Chris attended a half dozen UConn games this past season. “It’s a whole different dynamic. You’re proud to be there, your son is a college coach and that’s a great feeling. And also because I was a coach for so long, it’s almost like a family business.”
The Hurleys will have added motivation to watch UConn, too, because R.J. Cole, who played for Bob Sr. at St. Anthony’s, becomes eligible next season for the Huskies after sitting out a year following a transfer from Howard.
In the aftermath of the corona cancelations, coaching in front of his father in the Big East is probably the last thing on Dan Hurley’s mind.
But when life returns to normal, assuming it does, Hurley will be back coaching in the league where he played college basketball, the league where he belongs.
Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.