STORRS — When the sliding UConn men’s basketball team made the bus ride to Newark, N.J., for last year’s game at Seton Hall, head coach Dan Hurley, a Pirate himself, had contracted Covid and had to watch his team 100-plus miles away from his couch.
“Feeling really sick,” he said, remembering the brutal week which began with a home loss to St. John’s just before his 50th birthday. “Watching the end of that game, feeling even sicker.”
That game, which Seton Hall won on a last-second putback from KC Ndefo after UConn squandered a 14-point halftime lead, was one of six losses in an eight-game stretch that received credit during the Huskies’ national championship run.
“Our will was tested, our soul of the team was tested and eventually I think all of that made us a lot stronger as a group and gave us the strength of the unit to go on and become champs,” Hurley said Tuesday.
There is a much different vibe going into this trip to start the Big East season.
Hurley returns to his alma mater to coach against Shaheen Holloway, his successor as point guard at The Hall who he refers to as “one of my favorite people in the business.” Both played high school hoops in North Jersey, went to Seton Hall, began coaching at the high school level and then at low majors before getting their own opportunities in the conference they once played in.
Hurley appreciates, now more than when he was younger, how much his time as a Seton Hall student helped him in his “maturation process as a man,” he said. He loves the place so much, he said once he’s done coaching at UConn and out of the Big East, he will donate to the school for NIL.
First, whether he says it or not, Hurley wants to avenge last year’s brutal road loss.
UConn, 10-1, turns the page on another successful nonconference season and enters Big East play ranked No. 5 in the country in both the AP poll and the NET. Seton Hall, 7-4, rides into the game with momentum from a 93-87 win over Missouri in which the Pirates had the best 3-point shooting game of their season.
The Huskies, off a win over Gonzaga that made for two top 10 victories in as many weeks, will again be able to carry the confidence of success in the nonconference into March, when, they hope, they’ll meet more non-league teams in the NCAA Tournament. The Big East, where teams are more familiar with UConn’s unique style at both ends of the court, is a different animal.
With their targets set on a regular-season title, which the program hasn’t done in any conference since it shared the Big East title with Villanova in 2005-06, the Huskies would like to start with their second conference-opening win during Hurley’s tenure.
His message to the team?
“Just the toughness that’s required, the mentality – the nasty mentality that you’ve got to take with you, especially on the road,” he said. “I think we’re gonna get the absolute best version of people when we play them. We’re the reigning NCAA champions and we’ve got a top five ranking, so when we come into people’s arenas, we’re gonna give people their best home environment, we’re gonna get the other team’s absolute best performance.
“It’s harder for us to win games because of all that we’re bringing in, so we’ve got to be even better, even sharper, better prepared, more together – all those things.”
Guard-heavy Pirates
The crop of guards in the Big East is part of what attracted transfer Cam Spencer to UConn.
“As a competitor you want to challenge yourself for the professional level, so that definitely factored in,” he said after scoring 15 points to help the Huskies past Gonzaga. “The Big East has a lot of great teams this year, so it’ll be a long journey but one that we’re ready for.”
His first taste of Big East conference play comes in the form of Seton Hall’s Kadary Richmond, Al-Amir Dawes, Dre Davis and Dylan Addae-Wusu – who’ve each started all 11 games as a backcourt quartet that makes up more than 64% of the team’s scoring. Richmond, Dawes and Davis combined for 32 in last year’s game in New Jersey while Addae-Wusu, a St. John’s transfer, had 12 points and four steals in the Johnnies’ take down of the Huskies earlier that week.
Ndefo graduated and the athletic, 6-foot-10 big man Tyrese Samuel has since transferred to Florida, leaving the Pirates to rely on fifth-year center Jaden Bediako, who transferred into the program this year from Santa Clara.
Seton Hall, picked to finish eighth in the 11-team conference before the season, has the eighth-best scoring offense in the conference (75.6 points per game) and the No. 6 scoring defense (69.4 points allowed). The Pirates enter conference play second in steals per game (eight) and have the fourth-best rebounding margin in the league (plus-6.2), though UConn is plus-12 on the boards to lead the conference without a close second.
Where UConn’s defense has struggled, allowing perimeter shots, Seton Hall’s offense has as well. The Pirates have the league’s worst 3-point percentage at 30.5 and have made just 5.6 shots from deep in each nonconference game.
“Probably the second-most (conference) that I watched (while at Rutgers) was the Big East,” Spencer said. “Just how hard they play, the passion that the teams play with, I feel like there are some good rivalries within. Just all basketball-centric schools and it means a lot to all of them.”
What to know
Site: Prudential Center, Newark, N.J.
Time: 7 p.m.
Records: No. 5 UConn: 10-1, Seton Hall: 7-4
Series history: UConn leads, 48-22
Last meeting: Feb. 8, 2023 – UConn 64, Seton Hall 55 at Gampel Pavilion
TV: CBS Sports Network – Tom McCarthy, Steve Lappas
Radio: UConn Sports Network on 97.9 ESPN – Mike Crispino, Wayne Norman
Pregame reading:
- Breaking down the Big East: Marquette, Creighton biggest challengers as UConn men enter conference play
- UConn men stay at No. 5 in AP Poll despite second top-10 win in two weeks
- Defense providing momentum for UConn men as they prepare for Big East play
- Clingan leads way as UConn men finish nonconference slate with win over No. 10 Gonzaga
- UConn’s Dan Hurley continues to needle top teams in hopes of attracting more big-time games to CT
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