Pay attention, people, Dan Hurley once commanded classrooms
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Have to admit, it’s kind of fun imagining what high-profile coaches would be like, or in some cases, were like as high school teachers.
One in particular.
As the UConn men were pursing the championship this week, Dan Hurley had lot of fun spinning tales about his early career. Did you know he is, or was, a certified lifeguard? It came up.
Pay attention, people. This men’s Final Four has three coaches who began their careers the old-school way, as high school coaches who also taught classes.
“Yeah, I love that,” Hurley said. “I’ve been a high school teacher, I’ve taught world history starting with the collapse of the Roman Empire, mostly focused on European history. From the Dark Ages all the way through to the Reformation.”
The Romans got complacent in 476 AD, weren’t true to their identity, sat back in a zone. Romulus Augustulus badly outcoached by Odoacer there.
Hurley was a teacher at his alma mater, St. Anthony’s in Jersey City, where his father coached, and later at St. Benedict’s in Newark, where he was the head boys basketball coach.
Alabama’s Nate Oats taught and coached at Romulus High in Michigan.
“I wouldn’t trade my path for anything,” Oats said. “I think being a high school coach helps me in that regard. The high school job I had wasn’t one of these they pay you a bunch of money just to be the basketball coach. I had to teach a full-time teaching load. I was teaching five hours of math at Romulus. I taught Algebra 1, I taught geometry. I had freshmen, I had sophomores. I taught statistics so I had juniors or seniors.
“I literally had my players dang near every year, their freshman year up through math classes. It was easier to build relationships with my players in high school because I’d get them every day in class, even in the offseason. At college, you have to create different ways to build it with them outside the basketball floor.”
Kevin Keatts, who saved his job at NC State with his surprising run to the Final Four, was a teacher and coach at Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia.
“Some of the best coaches in the world are high school guys,” Keatts said. “They’re doing the same thing that we’re doing, but they’re not making a lot of money to do it. At that level, some coaches get a stipend or maybe $2,000, $2,500 to do their job, and they do it for the love of the game. I think that’s what is so special about it.”
There are other routes to successful college coaching, results are always hit or miss. Some go right from the NBA into college coaching, some through AAU. But even if you didn’t grow up watching “The White Shadow” coach at Carver High, it would make sense to believe that learning how to coach and communicate with high school-age kids, kids from different backgrounds with different goals, has to be a great foundation for much of what a college coach has to do.
“And that experience cultivates a certain resourcefulness. Jim Calhoun made his bones as a high school coach at Old Lyme and in Massachusetts, and he still talks very movingly about that part of his career. Geno Auriemma mentioned to me recently that he first fell in love with coaching as a JV coach in high school outside Philadelphia. Quinnipiac’s Rand Pecknold, one of the best hockey coaches out there, taught at Griswold and North Haven highs. It paid the bills.
As a high school coach, “you’re a one-man show,” Hurley said.
When your players are recruited, Hurley noted, as his father’s were at St. Anthony and his were at St. Benedict’s, you learn how the most effective recruiters approach your kids and where the ineffective ones go wrong.
High school teaching and coaching can only expand one’s comfort zone. The bell has rung. Put the cell phones away, people, and turn to the Final Four in your text books.
“I’ve also taught driver’s ed, health, sex ed to coed classes at St. Anthony,” Hurley said. “Being able to at 22, years of age, 22 years old, be able to teach sex ed at St. Anthony, coed classes, you learn how to control a classroom and keep an audience captivated. I think it’s definitely helped me as a coach in the huddle. I think it also helps, too, if you have other jobs, besides just being a coach, I think it just helps you with perspective a little bit, too.”
More for your Sunday Read:
Portal swings both way
I’ve been taken by surprise by a few of the transfer-portal decisions that have come out recently, but none more so than Matthew Wood’s decision to leave UConn men’s hockey, having joined the program as a 17-year old, played a ton of minutes and rose to the No.15 pick in the NHL Draft. Presumably Wood is headed for a Big Ten school.
There are more than
200 in the hockey portal, including two other drafted players from UConn, Samu Salminen and goaltender Arsenii Sergeev, who figured to be the No.1 next season.
But UConn, as it looks to bounce back from a 15-19-2 season, will have two seniors coming back for their fifth years, Hudson Schandor and John Spetz, and look for coach Mike Cavanaugh and his staff to be aggressive in the portal, especially with some Ivy Leaguers looking for a place to play their their fifth seasons. This may be the fact of NIL/portal life going forward for UConn teams outside of basketball. The doors will have to swing both ways.
Sunday short takes
Hurley joined Geno Auriemma in the club of coaches shortchanged in coach of the year awards. Win a championship, lose three players to the NBA, and come right back to the Final Four? Sounds like coach of the year to me. Most questionable decision all year was not scheduling his flight to Phoenix for earlier in the day Wednesday.
Nothing Alex Verdugo did was ever going to be good enough in Boston where he would always be “the guy they got for Mookie Betts.” As a complementary player with the Yankees, he just might work out.
Some of these MLB
“City Connect” uniforms look like something out of a Batman villain’s closet. “Now batting, No. 7 (which looks more like a question mark),The Riddler.”
The Edmonton Oilers clinched an NHL playoff spot with their victory over Colorado Friday. After starting 3-9-1, they hired Kris Knoblauch off the bench of the Wolf Pack in November and are 43-15-4 under him.
The Rangers honored Jonathan Quick, from Hamden, with a platinum stick to commemorate his 392nd career win in the NHL, most by an American-born goaltender.
UConn’s Tage Thompson has been front and center as Buffalo chases an NHL playoff spot, with six goals, three assists in the last four games and 10 and eight in his last 13.
Nothing overrated about Caitlyn Clark, but her supporting cast at Iowa has been very underrated.
Remember when parody accounts on social media were really funny? Me, neither.
The U.S. Basketball Writer’s Association chose wisely in awarding The Courant’s Emily Adams with its “Rising Star” award at the Women’s
Final Four. Emily is the very definition of that term.
Last word
This women’s NCAA Tournament has been terrific. Clark, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, JuJu Watkins are generational players, perfectly suited for stardom in the social media/NIL era. Now, maybe I’m jaded because here in Connecticut, we in the media have been covering women’s basketball as a mainstream sport for 30 years. But if anyone of a certain age is only now waking up to the fact the sport is interesting, compelling at the highest levels and worth watching (officiating aside), then all I can say is, “Wake up, Mr. Van Winkle. Don’t trip over that beard.”