UConn Basketball HC Dan Hurley talks Columbia postgame
UConn Basketball Head Coach Dan Hurley met with the media following the Huskies 89-62 victory over Columbia in the team’s third game of the 2025-26 season.
FULL DAN HURLEY TRANSCRIPT
Don’t piss fucking Bobby off. Thanks. All right.
Yeah, I thought, you know, first of all, I got just a ton of respect for their team. And I think when they get Avery back, and it sucks that a kid who’s had a great career there and who’s an awesome player, that the game went like that for him. So hopefully he’s fine and is able to get back with them soon.
But I just got a lot of respect for them. I think they got a chance in the Ivy this year to be one of the better teams, to be fighting at the top of the league. They got an excellent coach, not just a young coach, but they got an excellent coach that’s going to be a great coach in this game for a long time.
So just watching the film and how they go about their business was very impressive. And again, just with Thompson, and Bedry, and Brown, and Nolan, and then obviously Franklin, he was a super talented freshman. And front court depth, I just thought it was going to be a tough game.
I wasn’t expecting us to be able to do what we did in the first half to get that level of separation. It felt like we even, I wouldn’t even say it was a slow start. I just thought that we had, we missed some shots and made a couple of mistakes on defense.
But I thought the first 22, 25 minutes of the game were an extension of the last game. I thought we showed a level of dominance and defense. And 15 assists, two turnovers in the first half with suffocating defense.
I thought it was awesome. Second half, human nature kicked in, and Columbia. They got a lot of pride in their well-coached, and they got tough kids, and they’re good players.
And they didn’t want to get 40-pieced in here today. They fought their ass off, so credit them. And then human nature kind of reared its ugly head for us, and we didn’t play a clean second half.
So gives me enough things in the second half to be disappointed about. Missed a bunch of free throws and a bunch of things at the rim. And fouled a lot, and started getting driven.
What was I going to ask? I threw you off by that last part. Yeah, you did. Can you just write that off to human nature in that second half? Or is it, like you said, it’s going to be something you’ll hop on for the next few days? Yeah.
Some of it was missing some shots. I thought Solo went three for nine. I thought he had like nine great threes.
You know, you miss 10 free throws. You obviously have that sequence that brought me back to the Michigan State, where we couldn’t rebound free throws. We had that really bad stretch.
Like, rebounding showed itself to be a potential issue today. That stretch where it felt like the ball was at the other end for about a minute and a half on missed shots and missed free throws. So that’s something that’s, I would say, that’s alarming.
Like, we had things at the rim. I mean, that second half easily could have played out between 30 and 40 points. But we didn’t play a full 40 minute game.
And now we’re heading into a part of the schedule where if you don’t play a full 40 minute game, you can’t play. Like, we had a stretch where we did not play well for eight straight minutes. Like, you can’t play poorly into the stretch of schedule that we’re going into for like three or four straight possessions, or else the game gets away from you.
Dan, you set me up perfectly with the next segment of the schedule. When you look ahead, what kind of a challenge and opportunity do you see? And based on what you’ve seen from your own team, how well equipped are you guys to make the most of it? Yeah, I think, listen, this time of year, I think you know, people are challenging themselves in these non-conference games. And it’s a good barometer for where you’re at.
I think you have a pretty good sense of where you’re vulnerable. But it’s really going to expose vulnerabilities, especially when you go into the deep water now with BYU and whoever’s coming up after that. Because I have no idea who we play after that game.
And you just focus on a one game at a time mentality. I think the team, when you watch clips of BYU and AJ and Saunders, they got one of the best point guards in the country. I mean, when you see that quality on film, I mean, you get scared straight.
You know, things that worked the first three games won’t work. But it’s fun. We’re excited to get a chance to go play in Boston this weekend versus one of the best teams in the country.
So it should be fun. Coach, nine assists, six rebounds from Silas. Is that kind of the numbers you want to see out of him moving forward? Yeah, I like what he’s saying.
You know, there’s a lot of things that he’s saying. I think his defense to start the game on Brown in particular and whoever he was guarding, I think you could see that defensive potential there with him. And I thought he handled the game really well.
I just thought that the way that he was able to kind of quarterback the team, he’s going to have games like this where it’s like he’s got Tarris out there. He’s got Solo out there. He’s got AK out there.
He’s got Jay Ross who’s got it going in the game. He’s got finishers and shooters all around him and games where it’s not him to attack it from a scoring perspective. He’s got to get on the glass.
He’s got to do that was a little bit like a Tristan type of game where it was like bordering on double figure assists, six rebounds, so flirting with a couple more with maybe double figures in both. So yeah, I mean, this is what we brought him in to do. Dan, was that your first challenge at the end? It was.
It was a strange time to do it. But I wanted to get one under my belt. And I don’t know if I gave the right signal.
I think I did the European. That’s what they do in the Euroleague because I watch more Euroleague than I watch the NBA. Do you like that rule now though to be able to have that in your pocket? Yeah, I do.
Well, I mean, no, not really. We don’t want anything else to have to think about, like turning around and looking at the video people because you’re not even sure what. We don’t have the NBA quality of video.
So like the replays we’re getting is not the replays that the Knicks are getting or the Celtics are getting. So it’s a crap shoot over there. Here we go.
I was wondering, could you talk about what you saw from Terrace in comparison with his first half of the second half? Because it seemed like he was much more physical in the second half and really did a really good job of drawing fouls and getting to the free throw line at a high level. Yeah, I mean, he’s added a minutes restriction. I thought like defensively active, you know, like defensively active in ball screen defense, pressure and passers.
I thought he like was just so impactful defensively in the first half, you know, and then just super efficient whenever we threw him the ball. You know, I think in the second half, he maybe let his guard down a little bit just from a defensive standpoint. I think he I think he was looking for he was looking more for steals instead of just I think what you got to do defensively is like you try to pressure the opponent into making mistakes with the ball and you steal mistakes.
You don’t try to steal the ball from the guy you’re guarding, like you pressure the opponent and you wait for reverse passes on the inside shoulder or you see a handler under duress. And you I thought we tried to just start stealing the ball and not stealing mistakes in the second half. That’s why our defense got worse.
Dan, you’ve talked about expectations for Jaden Ross this season, seeing the movie, seeing it, seeing him do well. It looked like he was doing that through the first half, then had some foul trouble in the second half. What was your assessment of how his night went? Tremendous, tremendous, tremendous.
I mean, that’s what you’re looking for from your wings. You know, we got to get that. I mean, when we get Braylon back, you know, I think that that, you know, with Jaden Ross and Braylon, Jalen Stewart, you know, we do got to find our way to like, you know, Jalen Stewart and Jaden Ross playing well the same game.
I mean, they’ve got to make some type of a pack together. Maybe they can, used to be this thing, it was Wonder Twins. I don’t know if anybody remembers that with that old show.
I don’t know if it was a guy and a girl or was it two guys? They were a brother and a sister. Okay, so they’re both guys, so it can’t be that. But I think the overall point I’m trying to make is that we need those guys to both play well the same game.
And Jalen Stewart was really good the other night and he wasn’t good tonight, he just wasn’t sharp. And then J Ross, we’ll be a great team when like everyone shows up every night. Yeah, just switching gears a little bit.
I’m sure you pay attention to what the Big East is doing in terms of their non-conference games. And obviously there were four this week and I think there were all four losses, but there were some good games. But how much do you pay attention to that? How important is it for these other teams? And obviously this spate you guys coming up can do a lot for not only for you, but for the league as well, I guess, right? Yeah, I mean, listen, as bad as last year’s non-conference went for us in Maui, you guys could, if you go back, you guys could do the research on what our net was going into league because we were able to recover and beat Baylor and beat Gonzaga neutral and win at Texas.
So I could, you know, and didn’t lose any bye games. So I think, I don’t know if it was eight, 10, 12, but it was somewhere in that neighborhood. So even though I think we’ve had a couple of, you know, we’ve had a couple of losses in the league early in some big non-conference games, you don’t got to win all of them.
You know, you just, you got to take care of the bye games. You can’t, you can’t piss those away. And then, you know, you just got to win enough of these battles, you know, and, you know, we all got to do our part because again, I think, you know, you don’t got to be perfect, but what we don’t want to do to each other once we get into league play is what happened last year where it’s just becomes a quad three and a quad four.
You know, you don’t get many quad ones and you just end up really screwing the league. But that’s why you root so hard for each other. I mean, we were following the St. John’s Alabama score as our practice was starting and, you know, people were jumping up and down in the Providence game.
I mean, like, you support each other in a non-conference and then when you play each other, obviously it’s bad blood. Yeah, and after the New Haven game, you talked about the assist to basket ratio needed to improve. It’s really picked up the last couple of games.
What do you think the difference has been there? Just, you know, the approach and, you know, listen, New Haven, you know, they had a day and we were probably as bad as we could be on both ends of the court. But I just think that, you know, you get better as the season goes on. You know, you get a wake-up call like that.
Just get more comfortable on the court. They bought into, you know, buying into sharing the ball. I thought we had some great sequences.
I thought the first half was, again, like 15 to two assist to turnover versus I think what’s gonna be a really good team this year, shooting 60% for the field. You know, they’re shooting 35. I mean, we just, we couldn’t maintain that level for a full 40.
But I thought that that level of the first half was like not many teams could play a first half like we played in the first half. You have Furfews out there warming up before the game. Braylon’s still off to the side.
You expect either one of them to come back anytime soon? Yeah, I think, you know, Bray, you know, Bray’s starting to move, you know, starting to move on the Alter G and starting to look, shoot and do some different things. He’s, you know, people that are his level of athlete, they tend to recover. You know, he’s such an elite athlete, they tend to recover a little quicker.
You know, than even timelines. So I think without pushing him, I think he’s recovering well. And then, yeah, I mean, Furfey, you know, again, he kind of sprained it in a non-live warmup drill.
So in like a freakish thing. And then we thought he was kind of getting close to getting back and maybe even being available for this one. But then he took a setback in the rehab.
I think he might’ve just pushed it a little bit too hard. But, you know, he may be in the mix for the weekend. We’ll see how he progresses this week.
And Tarris is off the minutes. There is no minutes restriction for Tarras moving forward. So, all right.
Yes, sir. Right before the game, I saw Silas go over to you, kind of last minute instructions thing. Can you just discuss kind of how your relationship is growing with him and him being in the point guard? And you obviously know a lot about being a point guard.
Yeah, I mean, we’re trying to grow out of that part of the, you know, our relationship will grow throughout the year and throughout his career, like it did with Tristan. We’re in the stage of me being on his ass right now about everything, you know, literally every possession, every decision, everything that comes out, everything he says, everything he does, his facial expressions, his body language, his decision-making, you know, his violence, getting over the top of screens and ball screen defense, the way he leads, the way he directs. I mean, you know, it’s a contentious relationship because we’re trying to mold him into a quarterback, like a real elite level quarterback, like a all-American level quarterback, one of the best point guards in the country, an NBA player, a national champion.
So, that process is, it’s hard to get there. But yeah, our relationship will grow throughout the year as he continues to develop in the player that we need him to be, the quarterback that we need him to be, the Fasano that we need him to be. I got it right, right? Fagnano, what? What? Fagnano, Fagnano.
Fucking Heisman Trophy. That’s what I told you. All right, get a new four.
💬 Wondering what other UConn fans are saying?
Head to The Husky House forum and jump into the discussion →
