The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hurley embracing added media scrutiny
HARTFORD — Dan Hurley’s “You’re not in Rhode Island anymore” moment may have come shortly after UConn’s first official practice on Sept. 29, when he was engulfed by a surge of about 20 reporters bearing cameras and microphones and asking about 15 minutes’ worth of questions.
Of course, it could have come a few months earlier during the “UConn Coaches Road Show,” when different groups of local reporters met up with Hurley at four different stops — Branford, Stamford, Glastonbury, even New York City — in four days. Or when Hurley was met by reporters after each of numerous speaking engagements over the past seven months, including Thursday night at the Connecticut Convention Center, where Hurley was the featured guest for the YMCA of Greater Hartford’s annual fundraiser.
Coaching UConn brings a host of different realities than coaching at Wagner or URI, and media scrutiny is among the biggest adjustments. Thus far, Hurley has embraced it.
“Coming to events, you have responsibilities, media-wise, that you wouldn’t have in most programs,” he noted. “I’d imagine, maybe, eight or 10 programs in the country that have the interest in their program, both nationally and locally, the way that you do at UConn. You notice that right away.”
Of course, it’s better than having to fight for attention, which he had to do in his two years at Wagner and even at URI, a program consistently in shadows of Providence College in the nation’s smallest state.
“That was part of the appeal of the job, too, because you want to be somewhere where it’s a big deal and there’s high expectations and huge fan interest that you don’t have to market yourself constantly,” Hurley added. “It kind of happens organically.”
Hurley didn’t have to deal with any real traveling beat writers in his two seasons at Wagner. It wasn’t a whole lot different at URI, at least the first few years, when the Rams struggled. As URI made the NCAA tournament the past two seasons, the Providence Journal sent a beat writer on the road with the team more often.
At UConn, three or four different newspapers consistently travel with the team, and there are often at least 15-20 print, TV and web media members at each home game — sometimes more.
“That will be an adjustment
from places I’ve been,” Hurley said. “But growing up a Hurley in New Jersey, being Bobby Hurley’s brother and Bob Hurley Sr.’s son prepared me well for scrutiny and having a lot of eyes on what I’m doing and people talking about my successes and failures. I don’t take it personally. It is what it is.”
Hurley is very open and engaging with the media, never short of a good quote, a humorous anecdote or a sarcastic quip. That’s a change from Kevin Ollie, who often seemed uncomfortable in his meetings with the media. Ollie would answer every question and do what he had to do with the assembled media, but never much more than that. His sessions with the assembled media typically lasted about 5-6 minutes —
about half of what Hurley typically has offered so far.
Ollie also kept the media out of his practices beginning in January of his second season, after a reporter (yes, it was me) sent about 15 seconds of practice video to Twitter before practice was over. It was more of a technical error than anything, but Ollie came down hard and never relented, banning the media from practice the rest of his tenure. The only practices the media was allowed to see were the final 30 minutes or so of UConn’s first practice of the season each year.
Hurley allowed the same access after that Sept. 27 practice. It remains to be seen how much more access he allows the rest of the season. Either way, he seems to know the lay of the land, and that he’s not in Kingston, Rhode Island, anymore.
“It’s a different animal,”
he said, knowingly, at a makeshift news conference before Thursday’s event..
RIM RATTLLINGS: Kassoum Yakwe (foot) returned to the practice floor for the first time this season Thursday. The grad transfer from St. John’s is in the mix to be the Huskies’ starting center.
⏩ Hurley was extremely disappointed in his team’s practice Wednesday.
“We weren’t emotionally ready to put the work in at a high level,” he noted. “So we kind of threw that day away (Wednesday). The guys were great (Thursday), but we’re not good enough to give away a segment of practice.”
⏩ Hurley committed a while ago to the YMCA event. Harold Sparrow, president/CEO of the YMCA of Greater Hartford, asked a friend who had played at Saint Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey, where Hurley spent nine years as
a head coach, to ask Hurley whether he’d be interested.
“The amount of time I’ve spent in gymnasiums and different YMCAs throughout New Jersey, it seemed like a pretty good idea,” Hurley said. “Most of my YMCA experiences were on the basketball court. My dad had a real purpose. Anytime we were heading to the Y, we certainly weren’t going to be there to play racquetball or ride the bike. There were always travel-type games, CYO games, or just going to the Y and playing pickup. The Jewish Community Center in Bayonne is probably one of the first places I played in indoors, because back then when I grew up, most of your playing was outside. So it was always a great thrill to get a chance to play in a YMCA gymnasium.”