The UConn men have met their preseason goals, now they’re eager for more
UConn has already lived up to Dan Hurley’s preseason goals, and are now looking for more
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Dan Hurley was looking at the “Notes” section of his cell phone on the flight out to Indiana on Monday, and came across an entry from this past Sept. 1.
“Preseason goals,” it read. “Finish top 3 or 4 in the Big East ... make the NCAA tournament as an at-large. And then, reassess.”
So far, so good for the UConn coach, who has guided a program that was a middling member of the American Athletic Conference
two years ago to its first NCAA tournament in five years. UConn, the No. 7 seed in the East Region, faces 11th-seeded Maryland on Saturday at Purdue’s Mackey Arena (7:10 p.m., CBS).
“We took a big step,” Hurley said on Friday afternoon. “It’s hard when you’re the coach at UConn, everything that Geno’s done, Coach (Jim) Calhoun, Kevin (Ollie), all the national championships, to bow your chest out about just getting back in. But when you look at where it was a couple of years ago, what we were putting on the floor in terms of quality, being in the American, and now being back in the Big East and being a tournament team again and having the potential of a high-draft pick, a top-10 class coming in ... It’s hard not to sit in this bubble and not feel really good about where you are.”
UConn (15-7) is back. The Huskies are anxious, confined either to their hotel or the practice floor since arriving in Indianapolis on Monday. They realize Maryland (16-13) is no pushover, having competed in the Big Ten, arguably the nation’s best conference.
Are they ready?
“I have no idea,” Hurley confessed. “I know these guys are excited to play. We
know it’s gonna be a really, really tough, physical game. But you just don’t know. We don’t have a guy in the program who’s played in an NCAA game, or an NIT or CBI or CIT game.”
Hurley harked back to his Rhode Island teams in 2017 and 2018, which won firstround NCAA tournament games each year after the
program’s 20-year tourney drought.
“It’s a players’ time of year,” Hurley explained. “You’ve got to rise and shine.”
One player who will rise is R.J. Cole. The junior point guard has been cleared to play after suffering a mild concussion in the Huskies’ Big East tournament semifinal loss to Creighton on March 12.
“I’m definitely feeling a lot better than when I got the concussion,” Cole said Friday afternoon. “I’m just excited. This is my first tournament, first tournament for everybody (on the team). I’m just excited to get back out there and play basketball with my teammates.”
Cole, UConn’s secondleading scorer at 12.8 ppg, participated in practice for the first time this week on Thursday. The Huskies were slated to have one more practice on Friday afternoon.
“I knew R.J. wasn’t going to sit out the game,” UConn leading scorer James Bouknight said. “R.J.’s that type of player, man, he’s so tough. He wants this as much as anybody else, so I always knew he was gonna play. But just seeing him back out there on the floor ... it was fun.”
While UConn’s entire player roster is filled with NCAA tourney neophytes, there is national-championship pedigree in the program. Assistant coaches Kevin Freeman and Taliek Brown boast national-title rings as players, while Tom Moore owns two as an assistant coach.
“I keep asking Taliek and Kevin and Tom Moore how to win a national championship,” Hurley said. “They haven’t told me anything yet that I can use tangibly.”
But ultimately, as Hurley pointed out, it’s up to the players. And those players seem to understand not only the task at hand, but what they’ve done for the program.
“It feels good being the team that brings UConn back to the tournament,” Bouknight said, “and knowing from here on, this is the standard. There’s no steps backwards. The next players at UConn, this is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to make the tournament, and you’ve got to make runs.”
It all starts on Saturday night.
“I’m really anxious,” said Cole. “We’ve been here for a long time, practicing, being in our rooms. I’m definitely ready to get down to the real thing.”