HARTFORD — Dan Hurley has had a complicated relationship with the XL Center, second home for UConn’s basketball teams. For big games, against big-time opponents, it fills with more than 15,000 fans. For other games, it can be quiet, feel unfamiliar.
On Saturday, even against an undersized and overmatched opponent in Stonehill, it was close to being filled for the Huskies’ first Hartford game, to see the championship banner raised before the game. UConn won, 107-67.
It was at the XL Center, Hurley was reminded last week, as he had forgotten the connection, that he first confronted the struggles he was experiencing, the weight he was carrying as a college student in the shadow of his famous basketball family. He missed Seton Hall’s game against UConn that December night in 1993; his team said it was the flu, but Hurley took a long leave of absence to take care of his mental health.
Repost from yesterday: My story for @TheMessenger on @UConnMBB coach Dan Hurley, who opened up about his mental health struggles. Hurley had a panic attack at the New York Stock Exchange nine days after winning the title. Here's how he deals with it:https://t.co/HwuLqRYMQo
— Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) November 10, 2023
As he has built his career, climbed step by step, Hurley has never run away from these issues. He’s had the courage to look for help, and to talk about it. Last week, Hurley again opened up about mental health, telling Seth Davis for the website The Messenger that he experienced a panic attack in the moments before he was to ring the opening bell on Wall Street, one of the first of many stops on the long celebratory tour last spring.
These represented some of Dan Hurley’s finest hours, even if they were scary or dire at the time.
“I’m a confident person, I feel like I’m a strong man,” Hurley was saying Friday, as the Huskies were preparing for the Stonehill game. “I feel like I’ve dealt with a lot of challenges in my life. Especially for men, there is a lack of vulnerability, a lack of openness that leads to much bigger problems. We’re all dealing with grief, rejection, failure, a lot of different things in our lives that affect us in a negative way and we’ve got to have practices and coping mechanisms to be able to not only function, but to be at our best.”
Now, more than ever, Hurley has the platform to set a powerful example. Established as an elite coach, a national championship coach, his willingness to talk openly about his issues can be an inspiration to those who need help and are reluctant to seek it; to those who love someone who needs help and aren’t sure about intervening; to those who need to know it’s OK to say they are not OK.
Thirty years ago, there was more of a stigma attached to confronting and discussing such things.
“Now, the science, the information, the books and podcasts available today,” Hurley said. “The importance of good health and nutrition and getting a good night’s sleep and having quality relationships. There are so many things you can do that emotionally, mentally can put you in a much better place to handle everything that life throws at you. I’m constantly studying these things because I want to be at my best, be at my happiest.”
It may have been surprising for some to hear Hurley say, as he did to Davis, that winning the championship, the ultimate prize for him on many levels, did not give him the sense of fulfillment he thought it would. This is actually common for high achievers in all walks of life.
Billy Donovan, who won back-to-back titles at Florida and is a close friend, told Hurley last spring he could fall into a sort of emotional valley. Jim Calhoun, who won his first championship at UConn in 1999, his 27th season of college coaching, could also relate.
“Chasing the prize, you can almost get a picture of the top of the pyramid,” Calhoun said. “When you get that small finite, to the expense of you, your family, any plans, anything, as it builds its way up, as you go there it’s all consuming.
“With us in ’99, it was such a crescendo, and somewhere after all the things you do, you’ve got to try to restart the engines again and yet you have been through the most exhausting time of your life. Some of it is pure elation, some of it is trying to hold on to what you have. I don’t think there is any question there is a letdown.”
The point of a pyramid can be an exhilarating place to be, but a hard place to stand and keep one’s balance. For Hurley, any post championship melancholy was in large part because his time with a group of players that were so near and dear to him had ended, several of the key players moving on.
“There is an emotional letdown when you’re on a six-month journey with a group and it ends,” Hurley said. “There is a sadness to not being around that group anymore that’s very common. That’s not a negative thing, that I felt that way. It’s a positive thing because I learned, truly, why I do this. It’s the connection with people, it’s the process, it’s who you become during the journey.”
The panic attack on Wall Street came nine days after the Huskies beat San Diego State for the championship, and few days after the parade, with 40,000 in downtown Hartford.
Hurley and his assistant coaches were at the New York Stock Exchange, but he found himself asking why his players weren’t. And it was a crowded setting, playing into a feeling of claustrophobia he often experiences on airplanes. Hurley has said publicly, too, he is a germaphobe and sometimes steps back when scrums of reporters get too close.
With the help of his wife, Andrea, he settled himself and made it through the opening bell ceremony.
Hurley’s father, Bob Sr., was a Hall of Fame high school coach in Jersey City, his brother Bobby a star at Duke and in the NBA. The crushing pressure he felt to “measure up,” especially while he was playing locally at Seton Hall, nearly drove him from the game in 1993. He wouldn’t allow that to happen, but those pressures never really go away. Championships can change the course of history for a program, can change the career trajectory of a coach, but they don’t eliminate the need for self-care.
Now that he has reached the top of the pyramid as a college coach, some aspects of his life have become easier, Hurley says.
“The only thing that’s changed for me with winning a championship, there’s a different level of confidence I wake up with on the job,” he said. “Particularly on game day, particularly right before tipoff. I do feel more relaxed this time of year knowing we did come through.”
By all appearances, Saturday was an OK day for Hurley, his wife and parents sitting as always behind the bench, and the Huskies. They beat a team they were supposed to beat, as easily as they were supposed to do it. There were things to fix he said, but there was no need to talk about the unfamiliar rims or lack of opportunities to practice at the XL Center, issues that would creep into his postgame remarks in the past. He seemed to be OK. And if not, he would address it, as he hopes everyone would.
Hurley has heard from a few people since The Messenger story came out, and knows where a difference, in a much larger sense, can be made.
“I’ve heard from a lot of coaches, a lot of men, a lot of strong men that expressed their own personal story or to say thank you,” Hurley said. “It opens up some things for people to get help and do things to strengthen themselves, or at least being open to letting people know how they feel. I don’t think it compromised my toughness, most everyone feels this way at different times. I hope it helps. That’s what leaders do.”
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