UConn’s Dan Hurley On Disappointing Playing Career: ‘Best Thing That Happened'

Before he was the best coach in the nation, Hurley was a Big East point guard

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What makes UConn Huskies head coach Dan Hurley tick?

It’s a question that the basketball world is fascinated by as it's watched Hurley win back-to-back titles. It’s a question that arises for anyone observing Hurley at practice or on the sideline during games, where Hurley exudes an intense energy that men thirty years younger cannot match.

Much like some of the greatest sports figures of all time (see: Michael Jordan, Tom Brady), Hurley is driven on a deep level by his past failures.

Whereas Dan’s older brother Bobby had a legendary career at Duke, Dan had far less success as a college point guard at Seton Hall, an experience that may have traumatized him but ultimately created a resilient, driven monster within Hurley that nowadays seems to destroy every opponent in its path.

Hurley is, among many things, a fascinating psychological study based on his career arc. He recently opened up about his difficult college days in an exclusive interview with Graham Besinger. 

“When I really look back at the college experience, it was all the way around just a major disappointment,” Hurley told Besinger.

“It was like the best thing that happened to me … at that stage in my life, failing in so many different ways, and struggling in so many different ways, and having to have the backbone to fight through that and continue to kind of stay in the game and then have the ability to look in the mirror and acknowledge that that happened to you. I don’t ever want to feel like that about myself ever again.”

To be clear, Hurley was far from a failure at Seton Hall, at least from the average person’s point of view. He started for the Pirates in the last two seasons of his career and at the time of graduating had become a top-five assist man in Seton Hall history.

However, given the standard that his brother Bobby and the Hurley family in general had established, Dan left college feeling like his career had been nothing short of a colossal disappointment.

The opposite sentiment could be used to describe Hurley’s coaching career, which is far from over.

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