Dan Hurley and the UConn Huskies head into their first-round NCAA Tournament game against Stetson on Friday as the No. 1 overall team in the nation.
UConn is also favored to repeat as champions after defeating San Diego State in the title game a season ago.
Pretty much as boisterous as they come among college basketball head coaches, this success did not stop Hurley from sounding off big time.
It comes with the NCAA transfer portal open for college basketball. It also comes amid the NCAA Tournament starting. Hurley touched on the portal with reporters on Thursday. He did not hold back.
“It shouldn’t be open right now. The fact that it’s open is bizarre, and it’s led to even more chaos. For us, my perspective changes. If you run a great program and you do things the right way, it doesn’t impact you as much as it impacts others,” Hurley said.
Having the portal open during postseason tournaments doesn’t seem to make much sense. It represented some major drama during the 2023 college football season. Star players held out of bowl games as they entered the transfer portal. It’s one of the reasons legendary college football head coach Nick Saban opted to retire.
As for Hurley, his comments did not stop there.
“If you play for four or five schools in four years, you’re kind of a mercenary at that point and you have no base in life,” Hurley said.
Going after the system is one thing. Attacking individual players is a completely different thing. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.
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With transfers leading the charge, UConn is odds on favorites in NCAA Tournament
As noted above, this comes at a time that UConn finds itself atop the college basketball world. It’s rather interesting that Hurley would use this time to make a pretty legitimate point.
The Huskies leading scorer, Tristen Newton, transferred from East Carolina ahead of the 2022-23 season. Cam Spencer is the team’s second-leading scorer. His college career started at Loyola before transferring to Rutgers and ultimately finding himself at UConn this season.
In any event, this is going to be a major talking point during the tourney.