UConn's Dan Hurley calls out 'soft' Huskies after 28-game home winning streak ends vs. Creighton
Yesterday at 10:38 AM
On one hand, you can look at the result of Saturday’s game between the UConn Huskies and the Creighton Bluejays and say, Well, Creighton has beaten UConn eight of the ten times they’ve played each other, so what do you expect? On the other hand, even though Creighton has proven to be something resembling UConn’s Kryptonite, this year’s Huskies squad resembles the bespectacled Clark Kent much more than it does the cape-wearing hero called Superman.
Following a 68-63 loss at Gampel Pavilion which snapped a 28-game home winning streak, the UConn Huskies are now 13-5 and 5-2 in Big East play. At first glance, these marks at the halfway point of the season don’t look too terrible. But there is a much higher standard in Storrs, Connecticut than there is in most other college towns across America. This is a program that prides itself on being from The Basketball Capital of the World. A program that remains on the hunt for the first college hoops three-peat since John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins.
But right now, a three-peat feels like an impossible ask for a team that is being called out as soft by their no B.S. head coach Dan Hurley.
“My fear is we’re such a weak — we’re such a kind of a soft team, now that teams take the court with us. We’ve lost that aura we’ve had when we’ve taken the court the last couple of years,” Hurley said during a post-game press conference following Saturday’s loss to Creighton. "There's a hunger that you have to have when you take the court. There's this wild desire that you have to have where you will not be denied, or you're gonna get over a screen, and you’re gonna contest the shot, and you're gonna track down a loose ball. You're gonna give a warrior's effort. That's not who we've been."
In fairness, this was always going to be what held the 2024-25 UConn Huskies back from making college basketball history this year. Although Hurley projected back in May that this may be his most talented roster yet, size, tenacity and toughness were going to be areas that this year’s squad wouldn’t be able to match up with either of the previous two versions of the Huskies that won National Championships.
So what is a coach who demands excellence to do when his team doesn’t seem to be equipped to (metaphorically) leap tall buildings in a single bound?
“Maybe I’ll dial my intensity up even more in practice, I'll bring more fire to the sidelines,” Hurley said, which should make officials who have a UConn game on their upcoming schedule shiver with fear. “I just think the team doesn’t reflect who we’ve been. We haven’t been able to turn these talented nice guys into fierce, savage competitors.”
Unless Hurley finds a way to transform these talented nice guys into the fierce, savage competitors we’ve seen in Storrs over the last couple of seasons, UConn won’t be the team cutting down the nets in San Antonio on the first Monday in April.
The post UConn’s Dan Hurley calls out ‘soft’ Huskies after 28-game home winning streak ends vs. Creighton appeared first on ClutchPoints.
