New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Hurley hoping team shows ‘UConn pride’
STORRS — If Dan Hurley remembers correctly, he watched the 1999 national championship game with his brother, Bobby. Might have been a bit awkward.
Bobby Hurley, after all, won consecutive national titles at Duke. But there was nothing he could do that night some 20 years ago when UConn beat the Blue Devils 77-74 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., for its first national championship.
What Dan Hurley definitely remembers about that night was how much he admired the Jim Calhoun-coached Huskies’ style of play.
“I remember how they won that game on toughness, without a lot of firstround picks,” Hurley noted. “And (Duke) had, who, Elton Brand, William Avery, Shane Battier? They were wolves on that UConn team. That’s why I always have had such fondness for the UConn program. Those guys were incredible winners.”
When Calhoun and several other members of that 1999 title team are honored at halftime of UConn’s bout with Cincinnati on on Sunday at the XL Center (2 p.m., ESPN), Hurley can only wish his team plays with half the intensity of that championship group.
“Man,” the first-year UConn coach said after practice on Saturday, “I
hope that we represent that uniform better than we did in front of Charlie (Villanueva).”
Hurley is referring to the Huskies’ disheartening, 77-59 loss to SMU on Thursday night in Dallas — a game Villanueva attended.
Hurley ripped into his team after the game, calling the loss “embarrassing” and “shameful,” among numerous other unflattering adjectives. It didn’t get much better the past couple of days.
“A lot of postgame frustration for me,” Hurley said, “which carried over to (Friday’s) scathing video session, which then carried over to (Friday’s) practice. We’re just trying to make a point that we’re in the situation we’re in as a team, as we’re trying to build a championship program. There are acceptable ways for us to depart the court after a loss this year. But it’s got to be in a way where we’re playing with honor and represent the uniform the right way.”
One “acceptable way” would be how the Huskies walked off the court at Cincinnati six weeks earlier, after a 74-72 loss in overtime. UConn (13-13, 4-9 AAC) battled back from an 11-point second-half deficit against one of the toughest teams in the country, at a venue the Huskies haven’t won at in seven years, before succumbing in OT.
“We looked almost unrecognizable,” the coach continued. “We looked like a team that was on the rise there. Watching the SMU game and then the Cincinnati game, we almost looked like two different teams.”
Of course, in a sense, they were. UConn’s top two scorers that night were Jalen Adams and Alterique Gilbert. Adams is out for at least a couple more weeks with a sprained MCL, while Gilbert returned to the lineup for the first time in five games on Thursday night after a shoulder injury and looked rusty.
Hurley ended Saturday’s practice on a positive note, reminding his team of how well it had played Cincinnati (22-4, 11-2 AAC) on the road six weeks earlier.
“We didn’t lose that game at Cincinnati because they out-toughed us,” Hurley noted. “We lost because we couldn’t make an extra bucket. But we were just as tough as them.”
With a bunch of former Huskies sporting national championship rings looking on, Hurley can only hope for a similar effort on Sunday afternoon.
“We’ve got to have that
UConn pride.”
RIM RATTLINGS
Players and coaches from the ‘99 title team expected to be honored in a 10-minute halftime ceremony on Sunday include Calhoun, Richard Hamilton, Khalid ElAmin, Jake Voskuhl, Kevin Freeman, Souleymane Wane, Edmund Saunders, Rahamel Jones, E.J. Harrison, Beau Archibald and Richard Moore. Current assistant coach Tom Moore will be there, as well.