INDIANAPOLIS — To watch Dan Hurley on the sideline during a game is like randomly sliding your finger around an emoji keyboard to capture reactions as to what is transpiring before him.
There’s the smiling Hurley, which encompasses far more of his persona away from the coaching box than he lets on. There’s the laughing version of the UConn head coach, both facetiously at certain officiating decisions and when he can’t believe something happened with his team. There’s the rare crying face, which can pop up unexpectedly like it did last season when the Huskies failed to make it out of the first weekend of the NCAA men’s tournament.
He’s a masterful shrugger, too, and his eyes can expand wide as golf balls in moments like the one at the East Regional which has sent him back to the Final Four for a third time in four years. Perhaps the most popular of Hurley’s mannerisms is the furrowed brow, the head exploding or the coach who is simply staring into the distance in disbelief. Take your pick.
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Whatever impression you’ve developed about a coach who has won 73% of his games in Storrs, Conn., or whatever narrative there is of a Hurley who is 19–5 during the NCAA tournament at the ripe old age of 53, however, it’s both accurate and inaccurate at the same time. He is every bit the driven mad man a college coach has to be to succeed at this level just as capable of switching that portion of his overactive basketball mind off when the time calls for it behind the scenes.
This is the dichotomy of Dan, a line between both sides of his public and private coaching personalities which has softened with age and experience as he aims to do something this week that few in the sport, other than John Wooden, can claim on their résumés.
“I think a lot of people just think he’s always serious and just mad, but that’s not the case at all,” says junior Jaylin Stewart. “Practice from games is totally different. I think in practice, he’s more so trying to apply pressure on us in order to be ready for the games. When we get into the games, he’s kind of like a teammate just cheering us on.”
Coach, teammate, friend, confidant and father figure, Hurley is all of them to his team going into Saturday night’s semifinal game against No. 3 seed Illinois—one of the rare times he has been on this stage and can seriously claim to be an underdog.
In the past, that would have been something to seize upon with the Huskies and employ as both a motivational tactic and an opening to needle the media that he grew accustomed to sparring with as he rebuilt the program on their way to back-to-back national titles in 2023 and ’24. Nowadays though, be it due to increasing age or with far less pressure on him as the most accomplished coach for this basketball mecca in the Circle City at the end of the season, Hurley is no longer trying to fret about every aspect that comes across his desk.
He’s still working up a sweat yelling teaching points during drills and voraciously soaking up film on his iPad to be sure, including from the back of a golf cart up to the literal seconds proceeding an opening statement at a news conference last week in Washington, D.C. But the days of worrying about practice plans for the Final Four are far less top of mind for a coach who has naturally mellowed out yet retained the same burning intensity that has become his hallmark.
“I would say the biggest thing is when we’re driving in the bus, I’m looking out my window and allowing myself to enjoy it and I’m not going to lose my edge in terms of the monsters that we need to show up on Saturday night to get to the championship game,” said Hurley on Thursday. “We know we’ve got to flip the switch and be maniacal in our pursuit of getting to Monday night, but I’m going to let myself enjoy the parts that you should enjoy.”
One of the many faces of Dan Hurley. | Amber Searls-Imagn Images
That’s been apparent to all who have come along for the ride with UConn lately, having rather unexpectedly made it to the third weekend of the Dance after limping to the finish line with three of their five losses coming in their last 11 games of Big East play and looking far less impressive than any of their three peers in Indy. The Huskies were pushed all the way through to the final minutes against No. 15 seed Furman in their opener and required a 14–0 spurt in order to pull away from No. 7 UCLA to make it back to the Sweet 16. There, against Michigan State, UConn blew a 19-point lead before eventually wrestling it back to escape in a four-point victory.
All of that set the stage for the most miraculous of March Madness moments against No. 1 overall seed Duke, one which will go down in Hurley lore for the way he pushed all the right buttons to mount his own improbable 19-point comeback, including not calling a timeout late to set up Braylon Mullins’s winning three-point heave.
“There were way more choice words coming from my end, he was way more in control than I was,” joked Dan’s father, legendary St. Anthony’s high school coach Bob Hurley Sr. of the win over the Blue Devils. “They’re trying to do what the previous teams did with not having anywhere near the physical manpower. They’ve done it on staff. The kids are great.”
“I had to let everyone enjoy it. I couldn’t come in on Monday like a cold, damp blanket and just start destroying people on Monday. That just would have been a cruel thing to do to people’s spirit after such an incredible victory,” the younger Hurley deadpanned. “But Tuesday you’ve just got to bring everybody back to reality. The reality is that moment is over. It’s an incredible moment. You’ll have that moment the rest of your life. But we came here for rings, not watches. Everyone that comes to the Final Four gets a beautiful watch, but only one group is going to get a ring.”
Therein lies the newer side of Hurley, still driven by the pursuit of cutting down the nets while not annoying everyone around him with it at the same time. A number of his players cited such a difference in his tenor and approach compared to last season in particular, believing the pressure that came about in attempting a three-peat caused them to get tight and fail to live up to their potential in a second-round exit to eventual champion Florida.
Now, they still expect to be coached just as hard as they did two or three years ago when it comes to setting backscreens or rotating on defenses, but Hurley has become far more trusting when away from the court that his team can grasp his teaching points without him repeating them a dozen times.
UConn coach Dan Hurley huddles with players on the court before their Elite Eight game. | Amber Searls-Imagn Images
“Danny is, if you want to say old school, I hate that term. I say right school—he’s as old school a young guy as you can get,” Spartans coach Tom Izzo noted last week. “I love Danny Hurley. Not because it’s a love-fest. Not because I have to say the right things. He’s not afraid of saying what he has to say to the players he has. He’s even better, to me, that he takes it to the officials. I love that about him, I really do.”
Sometimes that is quite literally taken to the officials, such as Hurley’s now infamous glancing headbutt of Roger Ayers during the win over Duke on Sunday night. Though the coach joked that he jinxed himself this week noting that he had never been called for a technical foul in the NCAA tournament, the moment served as some nice levity for the team when they got back on campus. The clip of the incident was viewed dozens of times by nearly every member of UConn’s travelling party and didn’t change Hurley’s approach one bit when it came time to get back out on the court.
“Coach is always intense, you can feel it when he ramps it up in the huddle, like when we’re doing good, when we’re doing bad,” says senior center Tarris Reed Jr. “He’s always going to be that competitive, passionate coach I know he is.”
Nobody has seen more of that side of Hurley than senior Alex Karaban, a role player on the first two title teams who arrives at his third Final Four looking to surpass his coach’s older brother, Bobby Hurley, for second place on the all-time tournament wins list.
The coach and sharpshooting forward can, at times, turn into a regular Statler and Waldorf with each other. As Hurley was chewing a piece of the net between his teeth last week at Capital One Arena, he spotted Karaban to give him a bear hug by first grabbing him around the neck like he was about to give him a noogie. Instead, he told him to stop crying first in a moment both chuckled about after the fact.
The last few days, Cap, as Karaban affectionately is called by Hurley, has been trying to give a few glancing headbutts of his own to rib his coach for the Ayers incident.
Dan Hurley and Alex Karaban joke during a March Madness practice in 2024. | Brad Penner-Imagn Images
“We have such a unique relationship to where I think I see all sides of Coach Hurley,” said Karaban. “We’ve opened up to each other so much to where he’s expressed to me what he’s thinking of, what I’m thinking of, or just like if he needs help or if I need help. We just have such a unique relationship to where we’re just there for each other through the good and the bad or the sad times, whatever it is.”
Thankfully for many in the program, such times are infrequent when the calendar turns to March. That means there’s more time for the version of Hurley that isn’t as well known.
“He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever been around, off the court. He’s hilarious. He’s one of the funniest people, just down to earth and he’s actually easy to talk to. He could talk to you about anything, and he’s actually really easy to start a conversation with,” says junior guard Solo Ball. “I still remember on my visits, how easy he was to talk to.”
As a veteran, Ball is a frequent target of his head coach in every way. When UConn watches film in between games, Hurley often breaks things down into good categories of plays (running screens to perfection), bad categories (turnovers or being outrebounded) or things not sustainable (like certain defensive rotations).
Before diving into such clips with his players, he’ll often have a funny image or video to show first in order to lighten the mood in the room. Recently, prior to showing several of Ball’s highlights, that included an image of a solo (basket) ball on Han Solo in Star Wars that cracked up nearly everybody present.
“He makes me laugh every day. I don’t know why but he really does,” added Karaban with a chuckle of his own. “He comes up with jokes so fast—I’m shocked at how fast he can come up with a joke.”
Dan Hurley is quick with a joke, according to his players. | Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images
That levity is balanced out by the serious X’s and O’s that Hurley brings to the table, too. UConn’s offense features hundreds of offensive plays and numerous different reads off many of them, all depending on what opponents do defensively. For some, such intricacies can be overwhelming after arriving into the program from the high school ranks that allowed far more freedom or for those coming from other college programs who did not have quite the same structure.
Hurley isn’t one to necessarily slow down in order to teach such concepts however, not only aiming to get high strivers onto his roster who can follow along, but because he tries to pull them along with his coaching by not skipping a beat.
“My thoughts before being around him was, this guy is a very tough coach. You know, he’s gonna get on you, he’s very animated,” said Silas Demary Jr., who arrived after two seasons at Georgia. “Once you get around him, you start to understand why—why he is the way he acts. I think the way he helps us as players on and off the court, whether that’s having a routine before you get to practice or the way we should attack every rep in practice, it’s just been a game changer.”
“You see his antics, or whatever it is, on and off the court, but he’s such a personable coach,” said Mullins. “He’s very passionate. You can definitely tell in practices that he’s very adamant and trying to get the emotions out of everybody. It’s crazy when you do something bad, when you do something good. The emotions he gives off, it gives energy to everybody.”
Dan Hurley congratulates Braylon Mullins after he made the game-winning three-pointer against Duke in the Elite Eight. | Amber Searls-Imagn Images
This year, that has been channeled into encouraging something else: joy. Hurley has encouraged his players to live in the moment more and remain excited that they’re still playing basketball months after their initial, gruelling workouts over the summer helped put them in this position to hang another banner back on campus.
“I think you love the day-to-day, the grind. I think you love the work. You love the people that you do the work with. Yeah, I mean, that’s it. How close you get to your staff, your players when you’re striving for things together,” he said. “The season, it alternates between relief and suffering. Then I think the joy that you get is from a sense you did a good job.”
Hurley is known for plenty of things as the result of having a camera trained on him nearly all the time—something he’s keenly aware of as he often swings a hat from its preferred position on backwards to the bill and school logo pointing forward for interviews.
But few will deny how well his approach is working at the moment as both sides of the coach have guided UConn to the doorstep of history yet again.
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