DOWN TO THE NITTY GRITTY
With guard’s career at crossroads, Hurley knows path Huskies’ best player must take
The word of the moment is “grit.” It has several meanings, and shades within each, and it is the word new UConn coach Dan Hurley never omits when discussing his best player — Jalen Adams.
“My thing with Jalen, I’d like to just see that grit,” Hurley said after his first full practice. “He’s got so much game, so much natural talent. If he adds grit and toughness, a tough-guy mind-set, it’s going to change everything.”
Grit has been studied extensively by Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at Penn and author of the best-selling 2016 book, “Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance.” Duckworth’s definition of grit is “passion and perseverance for especially long-term goals.” And she breaks down grit into five characteristics:
Courage.
Conscientiousness.
Long-term goals and endurance. Resilience.
Excellence vs. perfection.
And, yes, Hurley has read the book and he’s a fan. He had his Rhode Island team read it and follows Duckworth on Twitter. “[Grit] is a real thing,” he said. “… Jalen should meet her.”
If Adams is to achieve his goals — to change the narrative of his college career, leave UConn on a winning note and put himself in the NBA draft conversation — he will have to overcome any fear of failure; rededicate himself to the details of his craft; keep his long-term goals in mind; bounce back from tough plays, stretches or games; and strive for perfection, understanding excellence is realistic.
So Adams has been good, but does he have that inner drive to be great? With his career at a crossroads, grit is the road he must take.
“It’s obviously a big year in his career,” Hurley said. “He’s a guy with NBA aspirations and is very aware of his legacy. … If he shoots the ball better this year, plays with more determination, grit, he has a great chance to play at the next level. For our season to work, for us to be a surprise team in the country, he’s going to have to have, I don’t want to say a Jimmer Fredette type of year, but maybe close.”
UConn fans don’t need to look west to Fredette, who starred at Brigham Young, to know what Hurley wants from Jalen Adams. In Huskies lore, Kemba Walker (2011) and Shabazz Napier (2014) are shining examples of what “grit” can do when added to talent. Both led UConn to national championships and are forging NBA careers, and Adams has long been considered the next in line.
But where does it come from? How can Adams, the Huskies’ leader in scoring and assists the past two seasons, be reinvented, reimagined now, going into his senior season? It began with brutal honesty. When he took over in March, Hurley told Adams he had been “cheating” and “taking the easy way.” Adams passed on trying the NBA draft and returned to allow Hurley in to reach for his core.
“I was going in open-minded,” Adams said. “Some of the stuff [Hurley] was saying, these are some of the things my father [Shawn Adams] was telling me, so maybe he’s on the right path. He has been watching me. He knows what’s up.”
By all accounts, it started out well. After the tough love of the spring, Hurley turned more complimentary of Adams. “He’s a better practice player than I thought he would be,” Hurley said, noting Adams’ effort in routine drills.
But something went wrong in late October. Adams, who was benched by Kevin Ollie for speaking back during a game as a freshman, and suspended for the opening game of his junior season after crashing his scooter near campus and leaving it in the middle of the road, ran afoul of Hurley and sat out a closed scrimmage against Harvard on Oct 27. Adams continued to practice with the team and took part in TV interviews during the subsequent week. He returned to action 6 1⁄ minutes into the exhibition game
2 against Southern Connecticut on Nov. 2 and scored 16 points.
“I know he’s hard on me,” Adams said before the suspension, “I know, sometimes, he’s going to be a lot harder on me than other people because he expects me to lead those guys and expects me to do certain things. So I try to stay positive with everything he is saying and know it’s coming from a good place.”
Adams, from Roxbury, Mass., played on championship teams at both Cushing Academy and Brewster Academy, and when he came to UConn as a top-30 recruit, he capped an up-and-down freshman year with a season-saving, 75-foot shot against Cincinnati in the American Athletic Conference tournament, which the Huskies eventually won.
He took his place as the centerpiece of the team as a sophomore, but the Huskies have struggled through 16-17 and 14-18 seasons, prompting the firing of Ollie and Hurley’s arrival from Rhode Island. What Hurley saw on film last year was “an easy 19 points and five assists” per game.
“We’re eager to win and eager to learn,” Adams said. “We don’t know too much of the right stuff. We haven’t had the formula to win games, and he has. We haven’t been successful the last two years, and he won 20-something games at URI. In order to be good, you have to listen to people who have already been there. …
“I’m the guy with the ball in my hand,” Adams said. “I’ve got to be an extension of him on the court, whatever his intensity is, I’ve got to match it so that our team can match it.”
Assuming the violation of team rules was a hiccup, the process continues. Hurley has tried to bring the “grit” out of Adams in other ways, too, such as getting him to bark at teammates when needed.
“These are things that could get me over the hump,” Adams said. “I’ve got to be tougher, be more determined and stop being so worried about everyone’s feelings. Sometimes, you’ve got to be the mean guy, the bad guy, but it works out in the long run.”
There is a conduit on the scene. Guard Tarin Smith, who played for Hurley’s father, Bob Sr., at St. Anthony’s, is at UConn as a grad student to help instill Hurley’s ways and perhaps interpret his methods. What is beyond the psychological, and beyond debate, is that the Hurley-Adams relationship, and the emergence of “grit” we haven’t yet seen, is where the tale of this UConn season hangs.
“Everyone leads in different ways,” Smith said. “Jalen leads with his intensity, his passion. You see sometimes, he hits a switch and he brings guys with him. You see the look in his eyes. You learn to do it in your own way, you learn to tell people the things you need to tell them and get your message across in your own way. He has his own way. It’s not how someone else does it, it’s how you can be comfortable and make it work for you. With the career he has had, if he buys in, guys on the team will buy in and follow suit.”