The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Bringing the Buzz
Additions of Hurley, Hardaway to AAC applauded
He was hired a little over three months ago, replacing a coach with a national championship on his resume and immediately re-energizing a dwindling fan base.
Dan Hurley? Well, yeah. But Penny Hardaway, too.
In fact, while the hiring of Hurley to replace Kevin Ollie at UConn has been almost universally applauded, Hardaway’s arrival at Memphis may be even a more natural fit. He’s a Memphis native who starred at the city’s Treadwell High, then at Memphis, before becoming an NBA superstar. There are buildings named after him on campus.
Hardaway, who replaced Tubby Smith as the Tigers’ head coach on March 19, coached
Memphis East High to state titles the past three years, while also running a successful AAU program. The Tigers have already reaped huge benefits in recruiting.
Sure, he’s never coached a game above the high school level. But it’s hard to argue that Penny Hardaway wasn’t the perfect hire for Memphis.
Or that Dan Hurley wasn’t the perfect hire for UConn.
Or that the American Athletic Conference just got a whole lot more relevant. And make no mistake, the league needs UConn and Memphis to be relevant. And good.
“I think it’s very important,” Hardaway told Hearst Connecticut Media. “Both universities — they’ve won championships, we haven’t won any, but we’re used to competing in the Sweet 16, the finals. As competitive as we are, we all want the league to do well. The older guys who’ve been in the league for a while want to see it advance, get the notoriety they deserve. Hopefully, Danny and I can boost that.”
Hurley concurred. “Wichita State, Cincinnati, SMU, Houston — they’re all succeeding programs right now,” the new UConn coach noted. “The league is in good shape. With the history and tradition at UConn and Memphis, it’s critical for the growth of the league and ascension of the conference for us to hold up our end of the bargain and be the UConn and Memphis that have existed in college basketball.”
“I don’t think it’s important — I think it’s critical,” added UConn athletic director David Benedict. “For us to be a nationally-relevant league, taking nothing away from the teams that have established themselves, Memphis and UConn have to be name brands with national appeal.”
Both coaches seem confident they can make that happen. At his introductory press conference on March 23, Hurley said, “Without sounding like an egomaniac, I think (the AAC) got better today.”
At the AAC coaches’ convention recently in Phoenix, Hardaway looked around the room and noted, “We have some really good coaches.”
“That’s no knock on Kevin Ollie or Coach Smith,” he added, “but I don’t think (the level of coaching) goes down.”
AAC commissioner Mike Aresco realizes how important UConn and Memphis can be to the league.
“Earlier this year, I said it’s remarkable how well the basketball league has done with UConn and Memphis down. And Temple, too, a little bit,” Aresco said. “Those three programs have tremendous lineage, they’re blue-blood programs. You can’t overstate how important they are. You need those programs to be good, absolutely.”
And let’s face it — UConn and Memphis haven’t been very good lately.
‘IT WASN’T GOING WELL’
UConn has won four national titles in the past 19 years. Memphis has been to the Final Four three times in its history and the national championship game twice, falling just short against Kansas in 2008.
Since 2014, when UConn won its fourth national title and Memphis was bounced in the first round, the programs have combined for one NCAA tournament invitation and one win (UConn, 2016). The Huskies’ last two seasons have been nothing short of disasters: a combined 30-35 record, not even an NIT berth and, ultimately, Ollie’s dismissal (which has been a disaster in its own right).
Memphis hasn’t been quite as bad. Smith took over for Josh Pastner two seasons ago, and while the Tigers won a combined 40 games and even overachieved with a depleted roster last season (21-13, 10-8 AAC), it wasn’t enough to enthuse the fan base. A slew of transfers (most notably the Lawson brothers, Dedric and K.J., to Kansas) and an inability to tap into the city’s rich recruiting lines spelled doom for the man who guided Kentucky to the 1998 national title.
“It’s unfortunate what happened with Coach Smith,” Hardaway said. “He had some really good players transfer, and it took the air out of the city. It wasn’t going well.”
Last season, Memphis averaged 4,583 fans per game — a 48-year low for the program. Since Hardaway’s hire, donations tied to season ticket sales are up nearly $3 million (from $2 million to $4.9 million) and the school anticipates an increase of $4.5 million in athletic department ticket sales and donations for the upcoming fiscal year.
Perhaps even more importantly, Hardaway has tapped into the local recruiting talent. He coaxed four-star guard Alex Lomax, whom Hardaway coached at East High, out of a letter-of-intent with Wichita State (with some classy help from Shocker coach Gregg Marshall), and signed Tyler Harris, one of the top scorers in Memphis high school history. He also got four-star forward Antwann Jones to back out of an LOI with Texas A&M — and, less surprisingly, brought in his talented son, Jayden.
“I’m not being biased when I say this,” Penny Hardaway said, “but all of our freshmen are going to be able to contribute. We’re seeing that in summer workouts right now. They’re highly competitive.”
Since UConn doesn’t typically get a number for season-ticket renewals until mid-July, it’s harder to find tangible evidence that Hurley’s hire has been a boon to the program. But there have been several six-figure gifts from donors over the past few months, mainly to help improve the Werth Family Champions Center, the practice facility that needs a lot of work on its locker rooms, weight room and other infrastructure.
Hurley hasn’t landed any high-profile recruits yet, but has had a half-dozen top-notch Class of 2019 prospects on campus the past couple of weeks for unofficial visits, including national top-10 forward Precious Achiuwa, fourstar center Kofi Cockburn and talented point guard Jalen Gaffney.
Achiuwa plays at St. Benedict’s Prep, where Hurley coached for nine seasons before moving on to college. Cockburn and Gaffney hail from New York and New Jersey, respectively, where the Hurley name carries plenty of weight.
Unlike Hardaway, Hurley has a proven track record at the collegiate level. He’s already turned around two programs over the past eight years, most recently Rhode Island, which went to the NCAA tourney the past two seasons.
Thus far, the steady stream of negative news surrounding Ollie and his fight with the school, along with an ongoing NCAA investigation, hasn’t had much of an effect on UConn’s recruiting. It’s only been brought up once in any of the recent visits. If the news continues to drag on for weeks and months, however … that could be an issue.
But there’s little question that the additions of Dan Hurley and Penny Hardaway have been huge for UConn, Memphis … and the American Athletic Conference.