The “disappointment” of Dan Hurley’s basketball playing days may have helped him become the head coach he is today.
In an appearance on “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz” on Thursday, Hurley touched on his time on the court at Seton Hall three decades ago, and how it still sticks with him to this day.
“I’m still haunted by my playing career in a lot of ways, just how disappointed I am to this day in terms of how that went for me at Seton Hall,” Hurley said when asked about his decision to spurn the Lakers to stay at UConn. “So I do feel this enormous pressure in coaching to kind of make up for that in a way and to achieve more greatly because the disappointment will eat away at me whenever my playing days are brought up.”
Coming from a legendary basketball family, Hurley faced immense pressure as he entered college hoops.
His father, Bob Sr., is a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer, having led St. Anthony High School in Jersey City to 26 state titles and four national championships.
Hurley’s brother, Bobby, was a star player at rival Duke, where he won two national championships before embarking on a five-year NBA career.
In Dan Hurley’s junior year, the pressure he put on himself became unbearable, and he stepped away after just two games that season amid struggles on and off the court.
“I was done,” Hurley said in 2015, according to the Providence Journal. “I was defeated. I hated basketball … I had come to hate the game.”
But it would all work out for Hurley, who would discover coaching shortly after that miserable 1993-94 college season.
After winning back-to-back national championships with the Huskies, Hurley turned down a six-year, $70 million offer from the Lakers.
With Hurley at the helm, the Huskies will aim for a three-peat, which is a feat no college basketball team has accomplished since UCLA did so in 1973.
