The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hoping to look like Houston
Hurley hopes Huskies’ future soon resembles Houston’s present
STORRS — It’s really all about the future right now for UConn.
With Jalen Adams likely out for the season and the Huskies largely out of NCAA tournament (or even NIT) consideration, much of the intrigue moving forward will be watching how the younger players progress. Guys like Sid Wilson, Tyler Polley, Josh Carlton, Brendan Adams.
It’s not that UConn (13-11, 4-7 AAC) isn’t trying to win. It most certainly is. But there are other things to glean from upcoming games.
“While you’re fighting, scratching and clawing to find victories,” coach Dan Hurley said, “you’re also looking for the small victories — how’s Sid gonna play against a high-level opponent? Tyler? Can Josh have a big game, can we finally get Brendan going?”
Ultimately, those players, along with Alterique Gilbert (currently sidelined by shoulder soreness) and a talented crop of newcomers coming in next season, will largely determine what type of team UConn is next season and onward.
And if you want to get a glimpse of what Hurley would like his team to resemble in the future, check out the Huskies’ opponent on Thursday at the XL Center (7 p.m., ESPN).
Houston (23-1, 10-1 AAC) is ranked No. 9 in the country and No. 5 in the NET, the NCAA’s newest metric which will go a long way towards tournament seeding. They’re not Phi Slamma Jamma, but these Cougars are good. Real good.
“Clearly the best team we’ve played,” Hurley said. “I haven’t seen a better team on film. Five high-quality, super-talented guards. A frontcourt of guys that would start and be big-time players on teams in our league that don’t even get a chance to play. They’re loaded, they’re coached, they’re mature.”
“This,” the coach added, “is what we hope to look like in a couple of years.”
Hurley noted that he probably wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep on Wednesday, but added: “There is a path to victory for us (Thursday) night. It may be narrow.”
Certainly, he can take some solace in the positive steps his team showed in Sunday’s 78-71 loss at Memphis. Houston coach Kelvin Sampson certainly was impressed.
“Watching the Memphis game, I’m amazed at what a great job Danny’s doing,” Sampson said. “The team’s playing hard, fighting, the young players are getting better.”
And that’s exactly the goal for Hurley, who’s eye is squarely planted on the future. With that in mind, he had a meeting with the aforementioned five players — Gilbert, Carlton and Polley, all sophomores, and Wilson and Brendan Adams, both freshmen — on Monday, trying to reassure them that they’re not so much about the program’s past, but about its future.
“You guys can’t accept the burden of what this program has been through the last couple of years,” Hurley told them. “You’re just getting started with your career, you’re developing, you’re potentially gonna lay the foundation. We’ve got some talented freshmen, there’s gonna be help on the way. Everything’s gonna get bigger and better every year as we go. You can’t get beaten down by what we’ve been up to this point, or anything we’re gonna continue to go through, because we desperately need you guys to grow and become a foundation as we continue to add things that we need moving forward beyond this year.”
It was meant to “keep their spirits up,” according to Hurley, and it seemed to have worked.
“It was good for me and a couple of the younger guys,” said Wilson. “It was more about, we’ve got to take more ownership of the team, more leadership. I’ve been trying to get more vocal these last couple of days in practice, along with Tyler, Josh and Brendan. We’re just trying to grow and take the reins of the team with ’Rique and Jalen being out. Those are two key voices in our locker room that we’re missing out on the floor, so we need to step up.”
Gilbert just got back to some live work in practice on Wednesday, but probably not enough to have him ready for Thursday night.
“It’s a tough ask to not play for a couple of weeks and just do some live work the day before a game, later in the year when you’re not going as long,” Hurley noted.
It sounds like Gilbert, who has had three surgeries on his left shoulder over the past three years, will be back at some point this season. And, of course, he should be back next season, along with Wilson, Carlton, Polley and Adams, as foun- dations for the Huskies’ future, not their past.
“They’ve got to keep their spirits up,” said Hurley. “These last couple of years have not been the burden of Josh Carlton and Tyler and Sid and Brendan Adams to carry. They haven’t really been here for the losses and the failures.”