UConn's Dan Hurley Is Driven By Insane Forces: 'He Lived In The Shadows'

Hurley's explosive success is the result of decades of grueling emotional adversity

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UConn Huskies head coach Dan Hurley has won back-to-back national championships, but it might take ten more for him to exorcise the basketball demons that have haunted him since his playing days.

Hurley is a man driven by forces incomprehensible to almost all other coaches and players, including his own, and that’s because his basketball upbringing was something out of a Hollywood screenplay.

Hurley was once basketball royalty's forgotten son whose game was forged on the streets of Jersey City (and by the greatest high school coach ever) and whose psyche and resolve were soon after turned into steel through years of failure and self-shame.

If you were trying to create in a lab the most insatiable mindset possible for a basketball coach, it would be hard to outdo Hurley’s.

Hurley’s self-described disappointing playing career at Seton Hall has only been branded as such because Bobby Hurley exists. Danny was an excellent D-I prospect out of high school, which is why he can relate to his best players just as easily as he can relate to his struggling players.

But as Bobby ascended to icon status at Duke and became the living embodiment of Bob Hurley Sr.’s coaching prowess, Danny had to sit back and deal with being the “other” son.

Until now.

Hurley’s arc from Seton Hall to UConn is something impossible not to root for, unless you hate resilience, destiny, and good guys winning.

Hurley's story is another example of one of sport’s greatest lessons — adversity breeds toughness and character, and those who go through the most of it may rise to the loftiest heights if they can survive the journey.

If you’re wondering what kind of special ingredient has gone into UConn becoming the most powerful entity in college sports, read up on Dan Hurley’s journey.

Someone who has definitely done so is FOX Sports’ beloved analyst John Fanta, who recently appeared on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters and spoke to Hurley’s background as a key element driving UConn’s dominance.

Fanta was asked if the Huskies can three-peat, which prompted him to compliment Hurley’s culture.

“It's amazing, but then you understand where Dan Hurley comes from,” Fanta said. “The Jersey City roots, his father, all the concepts that he's learned, and the fact that when he took this Connecticut job, Connecticut was in a state of ‘we're lost right now (and) we're not who we were under Jim Calhoun.’ For Dan Hurley, I think that that that gave him the chip on his shoulder of ‘I've got a challenge here. I gotta get this thing back to where it belongs.’”

“He's a Hurley, and he lived in the shadows of his father and of his brother who accounted for the back-to-back national championships at Duke in the early 90s, and I think … that drives Dan every day in a lot of ways.”

“(Hurley) doesn't get complacent because it's not in his blood … so, yes, they can three-peat because they've mastered their personnel and they don't need the highest NIL pot to get the players they want because the players want to win titles and get drafted. (There were) four Huskies drafted last June.”

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