Hurley Sr. watching
Former coach weighs in on R.J. Cole, UConn after rare outing
Bob Hurley Sr. doesn’t only watch the games his sons coach this season. He watches video of their practices.
“Danny sends me every practice,” Hurley Sr. said. “Not only that, Bobby sends me every practice from Arizona State. So I watch them.
“This is what happens in the COVID world. You actually can say something like that, and people don’t send out a team to have you committed.”
Hurley Sr. is basketball’s precious gem. He coached St. Anthony’s of Jersey City from 1972 until the high school closed in 2017, and his place alongside the greats of the NBA and college fits perfectly in the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Like millions of us, he also has been a captive of a pandemic. On Saturday, Hurley Sr. attended his first UConn game of the season. Coming from North Jersey, he said he “hit the daily double.” UConn, coached by his son Dan, won over Marquette at Gampel Pavilion. And R.J. Cole, who he coached at St. Anthony’s, played a terrific game.
“First game my wife and I got to since the Tulane game in New Orleans (March 8) last year right before all hell broke loose,” Hurley Sr. said. “My daughter Melissa and grandson Gabe also came. We had a ball.
“Gabe and R.J. are buddies. When R.J. plays well and UConn wins, that’s great. If one or the other doesn’t work out on a given night … we need both to feel good. So it was one of those feel-good nights and then we had a great finish.”
They stopped at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana on the way home.
Hurley Sr., 73, said he has undergone surgery in the past six months and his wife Chris has asthma. While they recently received the COVID vaccine, they’ve been concerned about going out much in public.
He isn’t going to the Seton Hall game Wednesday night at nearby Prudential Center and is not planning to go to the Big East Tournament. He is planning to go to UConn’s final home game Saturday.
“I was very comfortable sitting with all the cutouts,” Hurley said. “My daughter said it was the best seat she has ever had at a game.”
Nobody leaning on the seats. No crowds in the restrooms. No geniuses yelling at the coach. And on the heels of a strong performance against Georgetown, Cole scored 21 points, many of the game’s biggest against Marquette.
On Monday, Cole was
named Big East player of the week.
“We’re just so thrilled to see R.J. comfortable and doing stuff we knew he was capable of,” Hurley Sr. said. “It’s funny, by the time he became a senior in high school he was a good defender. He wasn’t a good defender through his sophomore and junior years. For the early part of this season, he was better defensively than he was offensively.”
Cole did a suffocating job guarding Big East preseason Player of the Year Marcus Zegarowski of Creighton in December, but he’ll be remembered for the two free throws he missed with 11.2 seconds left in regulation.
“A terrific thing he did right away was he owned the Creighton loss,” Hurley Sr. said. “He realized if he makes one of those two foul shots, they win the game. He owned that (in postgame comments and on Twitter), and as a leader you can’t just accept player of the game honors, you have to accept everything.”
Everything with UConn basketball is dissected, and Cole’s uneven play certainly was. Dan Hurley compared the pressures of playing UConn point guard to Notre Dame quarterback. He said productivity was part of not starting Cole for two games, but leadership was the No. 1 thing. He also said when it came to the crucial part of the season, Cole chose to stand and fight and not cave.
Hurley Sr. took a holistic view:
“I just think it was the cobwebs of being off a year after transferring, James Bouknight only playing a few games and he was gone, and then the adjustment of the level he played at — no disrespect to Howard and their schedule — he’s playing at a much higher level. Now throw in all the COVID stop-and-goes, and you’ve got a lot of things going on.
“I know they’ve constantly fought with this COVID isolation and they’re now finally getting to a comfortable place. Even Andre Jackson, as Danny said, is still like in the nonconference schedule. This is a weird time.”
Both lefty. Both his trusted point guard. Both had terrific senior years. Yeah, Hurley Sr. said, Cole and Hurley reminded him of each other at St. Anthony’s. Dan Hurley told Steve Lavin of Fox Sports that “putting (Cole) on the bench wasn’t easy to do, because he’s like my dad’s last Division I player. He was my dad’s point guard. So think about that phone call to my dad when I benched his butt.”
Hurley was halfway kidding. I think.
“Nah, I’m not taking this personally,” Hurley Sr. said. “I’m rooting for them all to play well and to win. The first game R.J. came off the bench, he wasn’t pouting. He was ready to go. I think one thing that has helped in the process is that he and Jalen Gaffney are friends. They encourage either other.
They can both play together, too.”
Hurley Sr. said Cole will sink his 3s; he has since he was a kid. He would like to see Cole always prepared to shoot. Playing defense, pushing the ball up court, sometimes point guards catch a breather when they’re off the ball.
“Also, his shooting percentage would be a lot higher if he didn’t get himself in those hellbent drives to the basket,” he said. “It happens to guards at the end of the shot clock when they’re trying to help their team.
“I know Danny has been working on R.J. with jump stops, the other day his stops and backup dribbles for (2-point) shots were tremendous. He needs to do that. Just eliminate that one more dribble, leave the ground and try to dive into the defense.”
Two weeks after their second injections, Hurley Sr. said he is growing more comfortable. Not to the finish line yet. So it will be TV at home for the big Seton Hall game.
“One of our favorite restaurants is right in Newark, but we have not been there since August,” Hurley Sr. said. “At one point the positivity rate in Newark had gotten to 40 percent. As much as we love that place, the close contact, we’re still not ready. Same with the game, there’s too many variables.”
And they did have a heck of a scare.
“At one point 66 out of 17 million had a severe reaction to the vaccine,” Hurley Sr. said.
Chris had one on the second shot.
“It’s a drive-in place where we go,” Hurley Sr. said. “Within seconds she was having a reaction. Her temperature went up. Her heart was racing. She had trouble breathing. It was significant. The EMTs and ambulance came over. They were going to take her to the hospital. After 45 minutes to an hour, her vitals started to come back to normal and finally we could go home.” So home it is.
“If UConn wins against Seton Hall, I believe they’ve done enough to be in the (NCAA) tournament,” Hurley Sr. said. “Look at what they’ve done without their best player who is so integral to the way they play. Who else has a player they rely on so much? (Luke) Garza at Iowa. Not too many others.
“James Bouknight is both smooth and athletic. If he makes 35 percent of his 3s, he’s unguardable. If he’s making 3s and you’ve actually got to guard him at the line, he can get to a spot and just lift. Then he has all that stop-and-go stuff, and when he gets to the rim he has so many finishes. And he stays up in the air so long he’s always going to draw fouls.”
The man is in the Hall of Fame. He watches all the games and all the practices. And those cutouts don’t interfere with his sightline. No one can deny he has a good view of this UConn season.