At UConn, Dan Hurley and Geno Auriemma share a bond over life at the top of college basketball
· Yahoo Sports
Dan Hurley still remembers the day vividly.
Geno Auriemma remembers the broad strokes.
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Which, frankly, is fitting, given the coaches’ respective roles over two decades ago, when the present pillars of UConn basketball first crossed paths.
In December 2005, Auriemma had already established himself as one of the greatest women’s college basketball coaches of all time: the winner of five national championships to that point, including three straight from 2002 to 2004. Hurley, on the other hand, had barely begun his coaching career, and was only a few years in at St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey, which he eventually turned into one of America’s best high school programs.
Auriemma’s son, Mike, was playing for the Hun School at the time, and Auriemma attended the game not as the coach who’d ultimately go on to become the winningest in college basketball — but just as a dad in the stands.
Even if that’s not how Hurley saw him.
“I remember being very insecure and self-conscious about what he was going to think of the practice that I was running, as a pretty inexperienced high school coach,” Hurley said. “Like, oh s—. Geno Auriemma is watching me practice.”
Did Hurley say anything to Auriemma that day? Introduce himself, even?
“I did not,” Hurley said. “I’m not going to go say hi to this guy up there. I’ve seen him on TV. He’s larger than life, and I’m a slappy high school coach.”
Not anymore, though. Because after Hurley won consecutive national championships in 2023 and 2024 — becoming only the third men’s coach to do so in the modern era, alongside Mike Krzyzewski and Billy Donovan — the Jerseyite once anxious about Auriemma’s presence now appropriately calls him a peer.
A friend. A confidant, even.
“When I need a truth-teller,” Hurley adds, “that’s the guy you go to.”
And while Auriemma’s success pre-dates Hurley’s arrival as the men’s coach in Storrs in 2018, the 12-time women’s title-winner has similarly come to appreciate having a counterpart he can call upon — and someone he sees himself in, too.
“I remember being that age and the demands that we put on people, the demand of getting it right, the demand of how hard you have to play; the buy-in to the program and each other,” said Auriemma, who’s 19 years older than Hurley. “Obviously, I was very animated on the sidelines when I was younger and certainly I don’t think there’s anyone more animated than Danny and passionate about it. So in those respects, I think we probably have a lot of things in common.”
The other thing they have in common?
The results on the floor.
Auriemma’s top-seeded Huskies are the front-runners in Phoenix this weekend, with a matchup on Friday night against rival South Carolina in Auriemma’s 25th Final Four. Hurley’s second-seeded Huskies are gunning for their third ring in four seasons, taking on No. 3 Illinois on Saturday.
There’s no coaching duo currently dominating more thoroughly than UConn’s totemic twosome.
Over the last five seasons, the programs have been two of the winningest in their respective sports. In addition to their two national championships since 2021-22, Hurley’s Huskies are tied (with Arizona) for the third-most high-major wins of any men’s program, trailing only Houston and Duke. The women, on the other hand, won their 12th national championship last season and are currently riding a 54-game winning streak.
Combined, the two programs have won 85 percent of their games since the 2021-22 season.
That has led to a larger synergy between the programs, which have won 18 national titles since 1999 (with the women owning two-thirds of those championships). The teams share a practice facility and their combined success has increased their ability to expand and grow. UConn just announced a $99.4 million renovation of Gampel Pavilion, its on-campus arena for the basketball teams.
Senior Alex Karaban — the last remaining starter from the men’s championship teams in 2023 and 2024 — says he has grown close with several members of the women’s team, including fellow redshirt senior Caroline Ducharme and graduate guard Azzi Fudd. Though the women flew to Phoenix before the men left for Indianapolis, Karaban said plenty of well-wishing texts have been exchanged between the two programs, which are attempting to sweep the national titles for the first time since UConn did so in 2014. (UConn is the only school to have its men’s and women’s programs win national championships in the same year, also accomplishing the feat in 2004. Only six schools have had both programs in the Final Four in the same season.)
“It’s rare that you see programs do that,” Fudd said. “It’s hard enough to get here with one program, but to be able to do that with two, I think it’s incredible.”
Fudd said she can empathize with the men’s team, and on more than one occasion, she has been in study hall or the training room and overheard Hurley yelling at his team.
“I’m sure the same thing goes for us and them (hearing Auriemma),” she said.
Karaban said the two teams spend so much time together in UConn’s shared training facility that he thinks of the women’s players, “like extended teammates, to where we just want to support them.”
And in each other, Auriemma and Hurley have also found support. Auriemma said he has occasionally stopped in to Hurley’s practices and has a profound respect for the intensity he sees in those sessions.
“The details and the way they practice is probably as good, if not better, than anything I’ve ever seen,” Auriemma said. “He’s really, really, really good at practice and teaching the game and getting his players to play hard. The culture they’ve built and the way they play together with a singular purpose — he’s relentless in his drive to make them better.”
That drive, though, does sometimes overextend — which is why Hurley has also specifically asked Auriemma to attend his practices in the past: most notably last season, after the men went 0-3 in the Maui Invitational to drop out of the Top 25 rankings. In those instances, Auriemma isn’t coming to give coaching advice, but rather to critique Hurley specifically.
To remind Hurley that, as good as he is, he’s capable of erring with his intentions, of letting his anger take over, in a way that doesn’t benefit his players.
“At moments where I was maybe expecting him to validate something that I was kind of questioning,” Hurley said, “he’s a mirror for you.”
This give and take between Auriemma and Hurley is not just rare across the college basketball landscape, but it’s also newer to Storrs. The relationship between Auriemma and former men’s coach Jim Calhoun, who arrived at UConn in 1986, a year after Auriemma, could be best described as frosty. Auriemma once said of Calhoun, ”Do we get along? No, but we don’t have to.” Meanwhile, Calhoun criticized the UConn women’s basketball team’s fan base and said having his team’s accomplishments compared to the women’s team’s accomplishments was like having “mosquito bites.”
Hurley, on the other hand, intentionally sought out a relationship with Auriemma as soon as he took the UConn job.
Not just because, as the son of a Hall of Fame high school coach, he respected Auriemma and his program — but because he knew that a strong relationship between the programs would only benefit both of them.
“The biggest mistake that a lot of coaches make when they go into a new place is they make it about themselves, or they have a level of insecurity where they don’t embrace the history and the tradition. For me, when you get to a place, to build something special, you need the support of everyone,” Hurley said. “Honoring the people that walk before you — the coaches, the players, bringing them as close to you as you can — without the ego of, this is my thing now. I mean, it’s our thing — and it always will be our thing.”
This article was reported from the women’s Final Four in Phoenix and the men’s Final Four in Indianapolis.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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