The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Huskies in Top 25
UConn ranked in preseason poll for first time in five years
For the first time in five years, the UConn men’s basketball team is ranked in the AP Top 25 preseason poll.
UConn checks in at No. 24 in this year’s poll, which was released on Monday at noon. The Huskies received 161 points, below No. 23 St. Bonaventure (whom they’ll play on Dec. 11) and above No. 25 Virginia.
“I would think when you return seven or eight rotation guys and have a top-10 recruiting class, that that would earn you into the Top 25,” head coach Dan Hurley said Friday night, before UConn’s First Night festivities.
Gonzaga is ranked No. 1 overall. Villanova is ranked No. 4 and is the only other Big East school in the Top 25. Xavier (22) and St. John’s (5) also received votes.
UConn hadn’t been ranked in a preseason poll since Oct. 31, 2016, when they were No. 18. They quickly fell out after dropping their first two games of the season at home to Wagner and Northeastern, and never returned that season.
In fact, UConn never returned to the AP Top 25 at all until last season, when they were ranked No. 25 in the Jan. 11 poll. The Huskies jumped up to No. 23 the following week, but then fell out of the rankings for the remainder of last season. UConn has been a team “also receiving votes” a few times in recent years, including last year’s preseason poll.
FIRST NIGHT FOLLIES
Hurley and the rest of the roster of Division I men’s college basketball coaches were at The Golf Club of Avon on Monday morning for the Connecticut Basketball Coaches Breakfast, which benefited the V Foundation and was hosted by ESPN’s Seth Greenberg.
With the seven local coaches sitting on the dais, Greenberg needled Hurley about Friday’s First Night fiasco, in which scheduled full-court scrimmages by both the men’s and women’s teams were scrapped when one of the baskets couldn’t be raised.
“If you fancy yourself a good basketball school,” Hurley told Greenberg, “you should have baskets — that work.”
Clearly, Hurley wasn’t happy with First Night, noting to reporters afterwards that the program basically had only a couple of responsibilities — make sure there was air in the basketballs, and that the baskets could be raised.
“Can’t happen,” Hurley said. “To get close to 6,000 students to come there — without an act, or without a celebrity MC, or without major giveaways of any sort — just because you’re a great basketball school ... we’re part of that. I’m a part of that failure, obviously the basketball programs are part of that failure, that we weren’t able to get the basket up and deliver the evening the students should have gotten. I apologize, and we should all apologize. It shouldn’t happen. It can’t happen.”
Hartford’s John Gallagher was named CT Coach of the Year.
MEDIA DAY ON TUESDAY
Big East media day will be held on Tuesday morning at Madison Square Garden. Hurley will be accompanied by R.J. Cole, Isaiah Whaley and Tyrese Martin.
Gonzaga will not be one of the teams present, although speculation that the Zags could someday join the Big East has run wild upon commissioner Val Ackerman’s admission that the league will look into adding to its membership.
“I haven’t really put much thought into that,” Hurley said. “Obviously, you want the league to be as strong as possible. You want as many really, really good teams, NCAA Tournament-caliber teams, in your league as possible. You’d love to be in a situation where you have seven or eight or even nine NCAA caliber teams, so that you don’t have a lot of bad-loss opportunities in the league. Anything that would strengthen the league, I’m all for.”