INDIANAPOLIS — Dan Hurley may well be inevitable.
The best coach in college basketball conducted Connecticut to a 71-62 crunching of Illinois in the national semifinals on Saturday, sending the Huskies to their seventh national title game. It’s both familiar and favorable territory for the program. UConn has never lost on the final night of the season; it’s 6-0 in previous trips, including the past two in 2023 and 2024 under Hurley’s colorful command.
No one should be remotely surprised that this team is headed back for another Monday night April opportunity.
This is Connecticut in the tournament under Hurley. Yet at the same time, what’s happening here is beyond remarkable. It’s unprecedented in the modern era of the tournament and may well prove unrepeatable for the next few generations.
For those keeping track at home, UConn is 18-1 in its last 19 NCAA Tournament games. The lone loss came in a thriller by two points last year against eventual champion Florida. Hurley’s still yet to experience a loss in the Sweet 16 or later, boasting an 11-0 record from that stage and beyond. In national semifinals and title games, UConn has trailed for a total of 13:39 out of 200 minutes since 2023.
Borderline fictional.
A quick reset on where we’re at with the best men’s program of the past 30 years: Connecticut’s blue blood status was firmed up for good with its dominant 2023 title run and fifth NCAA crown. Hurley’s status as a Hall of Famer was then clinched with an even better team that snagged a second straight national championship the next year in Phoenix, in 2024.
But three natties in four seasons?
If Hurley can scheme-and-scream up this team to win just one more game, a third national title in four years would validate outright dynasty status in American sports, not just college basketball. Especially when factoring in the opponent that awaits — Michigan, which mowed down Arizona in a stunning letdown of a semifinal — one more UConn conquest would cap off one of the greatest team and coaching accomplishments in any sport this century. This kind of thing is not supposed to happen anymore in men’s college basketball. Not in this era, the one before it and even the one further back than that.
We haven’t seen a school win three out of four since John Wooden was ruling the sport during a much different age at UCLA in the 1970s. Back when the tournament didn’t have automatic bids and was far fewer than 68 or 64 teams and wasn’t nearly as spread out with talent the way things are in the 21st century.
Force of personality has always played a prominent role in college athletics and in the success that can often come with it. Hurley’s as much an embodiment of that sentiment as perhaps any coach ever. He’s 199-74 at Connecticut, the 199th win on Saturday hardly being a work of art. But Hurley has always been way more Jackson Pollock than Pablo Picasso. He and his staff will throw everything at the canvas; that tapestry of sets and Xs and Os can be as beautiful as it is unpredictable.
Illinois, which entered this Final Four as the No. 1 offense in college basketball, played 37 games this season. The only two times it didn’t score at least 65 points came against the same team: Nov. 28 against at Madison Square Garden and April 4 against at Lucas Oil Stadium against the Connecticut Huskies.
Making it even more unbearable for the guys in orange, Illinois’ only other loss draped in infamy and anemia in recent seasons came against Hurley’s guys in the 2024 Elite Eight, a 77-52 loss that featured one of the most dominant in-game runs in NCAA history: UConn buried that Illini team with a 30-0 avalanche to secure a Final Four trip.
I won’t overstate it and say UConn was overlooked coming into this Final Four. That can’t happen with that coach, those uniforms, that nonpareil status in the sport.
But the Huskies were an underdog going into Saturday. Even with the miracle 3-pointer from Braylon Mullins that vaulted UConn over No. 1 overall seed Duke in an instant classic East Regional final, the Huskies had less glitz and hype attached to them in this year’s Final Four than the two most recent runs.
Despite the 13-point win over the Illini the day after Thanksgiving — and five more wins than Illinois overall — the Huskies were not the favored side. On Saturday, UConn held an Illini team that averaged almost 15 assists per game to just three. Illinois scored just .98 points per possession and only had two players in double figures, led by Keaton Wagler’s 20 in the final game of his fabulous freshman season.
The Huskies got just enough from Mullins: 15 points, including four 3s, the last of which made it 66-59 with under a minute to go and was the shot that essentially sealed the deal. Tarris Reed Jr. continued his outstanding tournament with another double-double: 17 points, 11 rebounds.
“The confidence from [the November game], there probably wasn’t enough made of that,” Hurley told CBS Sports, “where we just probably were a tough matchup for them, because we do have size and we had some tenacity defensively. … I was kind of surprised at how big of an underdog we were coming into it, based on the fact that that first game, I think we were up 21.”
Maybe it’s because UConn didn’t win the Big East regular season or postseason championships. It also took bad losses at home to Creighton and on the road to Marquette. But this team started 22-1! Earlier this season it beat BYU, won at Kansas and knocked off Florida in a revenge game. Against Arizona in mid-December without Mullins and Reed, the Huskies lost in the closing seconds in one of the best games of the first two months of the season.
In February, they held St. John’s to 40 points, giving Rick Pitino the worst statistical loss of his incredible career. Did people forget what this team is capable of?
It’s no shock whatsoever that UConn’s done this again and made it to another NCAA championship affair. The reasons are in the dozens but they all filter back to the guy at the top who’s the face of college basketball.
Hurley is as superstitious as it gets, and as he made his way to the locker room before the game Saturday, he walked by a television that had an old Duke game playing; the stadium was showing highlights of every Final Four held in Indianapolis over the years. He saw a much younger version of his brother, Bobby, playing in this city back in 1991.
Duke won its first national championship that year. Hurley took it as a positive omen.
“I’m looking for signs,” Hurley told CBS Sports after the win. “Indiana boy (Mullins) brings us back here. Michigan‘s playing in the Final Four, Tarris Reed on the team (was previously at Michigan). AK (Alex Karaban) comes back. You know, it’s just a lot of things pointing in our direction.”
Hurley was so excitable in the throes of Saturday night’s win, he was also yelling out for a local tailor as he went back into the celebratory locker room. His lucky beaded bracelet wasn’t built the right way, either.
“There’s multiple things happening,” he said. “I actually didn’t have my beads for the beginning of the game, and so my wife did like a half‑ass job. The beads should be all the way there, but the (jacket) lining is completely ripped. It’s coming out during the game. I got all types of problems right now.”
Hurley isn’t getting that jacket fixed now, though. No way. It’s good luck.
For Monday night’s mammoth Michigan matchup, Hurley said, “I’m going grimy.”
It’s almost never pretty with Hurley, but his force of personality and everything that comes with him — the good, bad, crazy and otherwise — has him one win away from elevating his status to one of the sport’s true all-time great coaches.
Remember, as Hurley said Thursday, the Huskies came here for rings, not watches.
They’ll win something even greater than jewelry if they can find a way to beat Michigan Monday night: all-time sports immortality.
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