Hurley sits Adams, Wilson during scrimmage for disciplinary reasons

Since being hired in March, coach Dan Hurley has set high standards, both on and off the court, for his UConn basketball program.

Senior Jalen Adams and redshirt freshman Sidney Wilson apparently fell short of meeting Hurley's standards, as both Huskies were held out of Saturday's closed-door scrimmage with Harvard due to a violation of team rules.

Hurley declined to elaborate on the details during a Sunday conference call to talk about his team's play in the scrimmage.

"We'll let you guys know as we go whether they're long-term suspensions or short-term," Hurley said.

In recent months, Hurley has spoken several times about the need for Adams to fully embrace the role and responsibilities of a star player. He's encouraged Adams, an American Athletic Conference preseason firstteam selection and team's top returning scorer, to be at his best every time that he steps on the court.

The recent misstep is a sign that Adams hasn't yet fully bought in. This is the second time in less than a year that Adams has been disciplined. Then-coach Kevin Ollie sat Adams for 2017-18 season opener against Colgate after the guard was ticketed for leaving the scene of a minor scooter accident.

"For me, I have really, really high standards," Hurley said. "You can't give me three great weeks and then a bad day or two. Got to show up every day and you've got to do the right things. And it's even more important when you're the best player on the team. Best player on the team and the head coach set the tone for the program.

"He's got to be completely bought in to every single aspect of how I want a player to carry himself in a program. Not just from 12:45 to 3:15 on the practice court. There's a heavy responsibility that comes with being the head coach at UConn, the best player at UConn, or anyone associated with the program."

Hurley had only nine players available Saturday. Mamadou Diarra, who's recovering from knee surgery, is out until at least December while graduate transfer Kassoum Yakwe (foot) is still sidelined but nearing a return to action.

It's the first time that UConn has played a closed-door scrimmage, but Hurley's Rhode Island team faced Harvard in past preseasons. It was basically a scaled down version of an exhibition. Players had an unlimited amount of fouls. Statistics were kept but not released to the public.

Hurley joked that UConn probably would have never hired him if it knew his overall record in closed-down scrimmages. He believes Harvard, the favorite to win the Ivy League, is an

NCAA tournament-caliber team.

"I try to use this as an opportunity to learn, to keep it real vanilla in terms of what we're doing on offense," Hurley said. "We don't game plan for it. There's a lot of a factors that aren't game like. But I saw a lot of encouraging signs from our team playing against a very, very good opponent that we can learn from and get better.

"... It was a competitive scrimmage. It was really good for both of us."

Hurley gave his team's performance's mixed reviews.

Thumbs up to his backcourt and manto-man perimeter defense in the first half.

Thumbs down to his frontcourt play, as Hurley cited "major issues" with rim protection and low post defense, as well as rebounding and toughness deficiencies.

The backcourt stood out despite missing Adams. Redshirt sophomore guard Alterique Gilbert showed no signs of rust from his long layoff. Shoulder issues limited him to only nine games in the last two seasons.

"Al, for a guy that hasn't played much live basketball in the last couple of years, was very impressive," Hurley said. "He looked real confident in his health. He played with joy. It was almost like grateful or something. He had this whole energy about him that was infectious. His speed and quickness was incredibly apparent. He was just in attack mode throughout.

"Obviously, he's only going to get better from here."

Hurley loved the way junior guard Christian Vital competed. Vital and fellow guards Gilbert, graduate transfer Tarin Smith and freshman Brendan Adams showed some defensive prowess. Smith was restricted to just 20 minutes due to a thigh contusion.

"They looked like guys that could have played for me at other places where we've gotten after people on the perimeter," Hurley said. "They weren't able to do it the whole way through."

Hurley had far less praise for his frontcourt. Senior Eric Cobb was the only exception.

"Eric Cobb was our best frontcourt player, probably by far, especially on the offensive end," Hurley said. "I wasn't particularly pleased with any of our defensive play or rebounding effort with the frontcourt."

There's only a short time for Hurley to work on his team's shortcomings with the season opener against Morehead State on Nov. 8 less than two weeks away. The Huskies play their only exhibition game on Friday night against Southern Connecticut in Storrs. g.keefe@theday.com