Allegations Mount Against UConn As Dan Hurley’s “Embarrassing” Antics Spark Jeff Goodman’s Bold Theory

The UConn Huskies had a nightmare outing at the Maui Invitational. With three straight surprise losses to unranked teams, the Huskies fell from No.2 to 25 in the AP Poll, barely avoiding being unranked. While the team’s performance was embarrassing and certainly under question in Maui, their two-time championship-winning coach Dan Hurley’s behavior was no saving grace.

During the recently concluded Maui Invitational, Hurley was on notice more than his team for criticizing officials, trespassing bench decorum, and post-match outbursts over referring decisions. His behavior was called out by fans and others in the basketball community and now popular analyst Jeff Goodman has come up with a theory, which according to him, explains why Hurley keeps on continuing his “embarrassing” behavior.

On Tuesday’s episode of The Field Of 68: After Dark, Goodman joined Robbie Hummel to talk about Hurley’s behavior. Goodman was furious with Hurley and revealed why the referees didn’t take any action against the UConn coach for his sideline antics.

“For a coach of his caliber, it is embarrassing, he is so much above this…I mean the Maui game, he should have gotten ejected in maybe the first half,” Robbie Hummel stated. Goodman chimed in to say, “You could find 20 other games, Rob. You could find 20 other games where over the last couple years… three years that you could honestly make a case that he should have been tossed. And a lot of the Big East officials are scared to toss him because they know right now this guy is huge,” Goodman remarked when Hummel interjected to say “because they don’t want to be the story.”

The Huskies are a major team in the Big East and won the conference championship last season. Hence, according to Goodman the refs,
“don’t want to lose games also,” by going against Hurley. 

“I get that but like every ref out there is thinking, man, if I toss him now it’s a story. Now I’m the story. I’m inserting myself in the game and they don’t want that. But like when he’s berating them every call… it is every call it’s just it’s pretty insane to watch, Hummel added.

Hurley was far from his best behavior during his team’s string of losses in Maui. During the opening round defeat to Memphis, the 51-year-old was hit by only one technical foul that too against the Memphis when he dropped to his knees in protest against the over-the-back offensive foul against his forward Liam McNeeley in OT.

That led to four points from PJ Carter’s free throws with 40 seconds remaining and turned a 92-all game into a 96-92 Memphis lead, as they eventually saw out the game 99-97. Very early in the first half, Hurley was seen berating the officials on the sidelines, regularly going at them and breaking the boundary of the coaching box. These incidents were more or less repeated in the other two defeats UConn suffered.

After the Memphis defeat, he also unpleasantly questioned the officiating. “That was a joke. I just watched it,” Hurley said of the call, going on to say that Memphis made “no attempt to block out” on the play. “There was a player on Memphis that made a half-ass effort to rebound that basketball and Liam McNeeley high-pointed that rebound. For that call to be made at that point of the game was a complete joke.”

Talking more about the offensive foul he added, “I think it was the s***y calls. I would expect to come to play in an event, and I don’t know too many back-to-back national championship teams that get that type of a whistle.”

After the Colorado loss, he repeated more of the same rhetoric. During the game, officials did not call a potential over-the-back foul on Colorado as it grabbed an offensive rebound to keep the possession alive and eventually score the winning basket in the narrow 73-72 victory. In the post-game presser, he called no-call “more egregious” and “ironic.”

The referees are aware of Hurley’s tantrums and hot-headedness and maybe they are overlooking some of his antics giving him leeway in this situation, but a look at the rulebook would suggest, strict action should have been taken against him for his behavior on the sidelines in Maui.

Article 1.h calls for action if a staff “Disrespectfully contacts an official or makes a threat of physical intimidation or harm to include pushing, shoving, spitting, or attempting to make physical contact with an official.” In this case, there is provision for an ejection and a suspension for the team’s next regular-season game. During the Maui Invitational, Hurley was seen charging at officials and had to be restrained by the rest of his staff.

It looked as if Hurley did not give enough respect to the NCAA rulebook. As per Kyle Boone of CBS Sports, the way Hurley was treated by the officials made clear the “truth of officiating” since according to him, the New Jersey-born coach was “being handled with kid gloves.”

And it wasn’t only these two media personalities who slammed Hurley. Even Mark Zanetto reminded everyone of the Huskies’ press secretary’s tweet while his guest Dan Meehan compared Hurley to former Huskies HC Jim Calhoun.

Dan Hurley receives flak for his antics

The Huskies were the best-ranked team in this year’s Maui Invitational. However, in a turn of events, they lost all three games, the most losses for any team in the tourney, and finished last. This was the first time that a top-two ranked team lost three games in succession within a period of three days since Louisville in 1986-87. And taking note of Hurley’s antics, Huskies press secretary Marie LeBrun asked him to smile more often.

“The idea that Dan Hurley has to change it all is so overblown and my favorite comment of the weekend and I retweeted it I think a couple hours ago. She’s been on the show. It’s not her real name, but she’s the press secretary for UConn- Marie LeBrun. She said ‘Awesome Twitter follow my column, how Dan Hurley needs to smile more.’”

Meanwhile, his guest Meehan compared Hurley to Calhoun who was famous for his temperament issues. “Hurley was doing a lot of coaching tonight. Every single foul seemed to result in him yanking the guy off the floor—it was like a flashback to the old Jim Calhoun days. He’d pull you out and remind you.” Notably, Calhoun was known for being “a two-fisted, stand-up guy who fought for every inch.”

For UConn fans, they will hope their side can put their disastrous Maui run behind them and continue their charge toward the 3-peat. For this, they will also need Dan Hurley to be at his best and keep his cool on the bench.