UConn head coach Dan Hurley was named Big East Coach of the Year during the league’s major awards presentation at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.
It is the second conference Coach of the Year title for Hurley and his first in the Big East. He was named the Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year in 2018, after leading Rhode Island to a 15-3 record in the A-10 in his final season leading the Rams.
Hurley holds a 132-58 record through six years at UConn and is 283-163 over his 13-year Division I coaching career, including previous stints at Wagner and Rhode Island.
“In this league it’s iron sharpens iron,” Hurley said. “The roster of coaches is incredible, the accomplishments – it’s a true round robin and then the places are some of the hardest places to go play and win.”
The Big East also announced UConn’s Stephon Castle as the league’s Freshman of the Year on Wednesday.
UConn’s Stephon Castle wins Big East Freshman of the Year
Hurley retooled his roster after leading UConn to its fifth national championship last year and losing three pro-level starters in Andre Jackson Jr., Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sanogo, in addition to a pair of bench pieces in Joey Calcaterra and Nahiem Alleyne. He counted on Donovan Clingan and Alex Karaban to make jumps in production in their second seasons and recruited a perfect transfer portal addition in former Rutgers guard Cam Spencer.
The Carpenter 😤🔨 pic.twitter.com/OpnWD8ILcv
— UConn Men's Basketball (@UConnMBB) March 13, 2024
The conference honor comes after Hurley led the reigning national champions to a program-record 28 regular season wins with a Big East-record 18 coming in conference play. UConn clinched its first outright regular season title since 1998-99 and its 11th regular season championship all-time, outright or shared, with two games to spare – both of which the Huskies won on the road.
Hurley credited the rest of his coaching staff: Tom Moore, Kimani Young and Luke Murray, and the team after accepting the award on Wednesday.
“As great as a program’s history or tradition is, it’s only gonna be as good as the coaching staff that’s there, the players you attract and then obviously the work and culture that you put in place,” Hurley said. “Just because a place has got a great history, and obviously Coach Calhoun and Geno (Auriemma) set UConn basketball up to be one of the best brands in college sports, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna be successful. Obviously you get all the resources and you have an incredible fan base and you’ve got awesome support, but you’ve got to have the people.”
UConn is favored to win back-to-back national titles for the first time since Florida did it in 2006-07, and become only the third program to win in consecutive years since UCLA in 1973, when only 25 teams were in the field.
The Huskies finished the conference season leading the Big East in several statistical categories, including: scoring defense (64.4 points allowed), scoring margin (+13.8), defensive field goal percentage (39.9%), 3-point percentage (38.2%), defensive 3-point percentage (29.3%), defensive rebounding (30.8 per game), rebounding margin (+6.9), assists (17.6) and assist/turnover ratio (1.8).
UConn is set to begin its Big East Tournament run as the 1-seed on Thursday, set to face the winner of Wednesday’s matchup between 8-seed Butler and 9-seed Xavier.
