Dan Hurley said he wasn’t going to give out any “clickbait” a day before his top-ranked UConn men’s basketball team makes its fourth trip of the season to Madison Square Garden for a matchup with Rick Pitino and St. John’s.
The Huskies’ sixth-year head coach was anticipating the inevitable questions about a budding rivalry between head coaches, given Pitino’s attempt to move next year’s matchup to Carnesecca Arena. Pitino has also made separate, indirect comments on what he believes is the proper sideline demeanor for coaches, saying that arguing with referees and inciting crowds – two things Hurley has become synonymous with – is “a form of cheating.”
Hurley responded to the idea of moving next year’s game by saying he’s obsessed with his next opponent – “The last thing I’m thinking about is where I’m playing somebody next year,” he said on New Year’s Day. That was a day before the teams met in Hartford for what was a 69-65 UConn win. He also said St. John’s is doing what it needs to build its program up and cited recent success, or lack thereof: “Everyone’s trying to get what we have,” he said.
On a Zoom call Friday, leading into the second matchup of the year between the programs, Hurley said he doesn’t pay attention to opposing coaches “unless they’ve crossed over to (his) side of half court.” But he understands that a coaching rivalry – something the Big East has been known for since the very beginning – can help bring eyes to what he called “one of the worst marketed major sports that we have.”
“Listen, if it takes bad blood between me and another coach to get us over a million viewers for our game (Saturday) and for a sold out arena at MSG – I love college basketball, I think college basketball is the best form of basketball because we are life and death about winning the game and it’s not about getting numbers or accumulating numbers, it’s about just pure desperation to win games to either get into the NCAA Tournament or improve your seeding,” Hurley said.
“We do a (bad) job of marketing college basketball so, I don’t know, maybe I should… Nope, no clicks.”
Asked whether he thinks there is “bad blood” between him and Pitino, Hurley expanded on his point:
“The Big East, these games are the most compelling games in my opinion. … It looks like you’ve got multiple teams that are competing to get to a Final Four or could win a national championship, you’ve got some of the best coaches in the game right now, you have fan bases that are incredibly passionate, these are huge basketball schools and the fan bases are all brutal.
“It creates this tension between programs and you’ve got coaches in this league that I think are amongst the best in the game, we all have egos and I don’t think that any of us are in this to become lifelong friends,” he said. “I just think if drama and all that type of (stuff) packs MSG and gets these ratings up for the Big East, which we desperately need right now going into what we’re going into with the TV deal and such … write what you want.”
St. John’s comes into Saturday’s game having lost four of its last five while UConn looks to continue a nine-game winning streak that includes a 43-point waxing of Xavier on Sunday and a 74-65 win over Providence Wednesday. Xavier responded to its loss in Hartford by beating St. John’s, 88-77, on Wednesday.
Alex Karaban a gametime decision
UConn redshirt sophomore Alex Karaban went down with a sprained ankle in the first half of Wednesday’s game against Providence. He had the ankle taped up in the locker room and returned to play 34 minutes in the game.
“Unfortunately we have the dreaded gametime decision for Alex Karaban,” Hurley said. “Came out of (the game) pretty decent and he’s recovered, especially (Friday), pretty well, but it was a good sprain. He’s obviously a total warrior to be able to come back and finish that game. He desperately wants to go, based on how he feels (Saturday), we’ll make that decision probably at the arena pre-game.”
Karaban is third on the team in both scoring (14.5 points per game) and rebounding (5.8) while shooting 39.3% from beyond the arc.
Pulled back to reality
Hurley said part of UConn’s performance on Sunday, the 43-point win over Xavier, “was not the real world.”
“We caught Xavier at probably their worst, we were at our absolute best, everything went our way for two hours. That was a once-in-a-career type of game for everybody,” he said. “We got pulled down into reality versus Providence just with the physicality of that game.”
Saturday’s matchup against the Johnnies, the best offensive rebounding team in the conference (15.1 per game), should be more like the latter.
“That was hopefully a wake-up call the other day because we were not ready to go,” he said. “When their guards are getting multiple offensive rebounds, three-point plays through us at the rim to start that game, we weren’t ready to go.”
Need some ‘nastiness’ from Donovan Clingan
When St. John’s came to Hartford on Jan. 2 it was the first game Donovan Clingan had missed after injuring his foot at Seton Hall the game prior. Samson Johnson held it down offensively with a career-high 16 points on 7 of 10 shooting, but the Johnnies took advantage of UConn’s lacking interior defense and shot 16 of 34 inside the arc.
Clingan, since his return on Jan. 17, has improved that inside defense drastically. But he got into foul trouble early and was held out for 16 minutes of the first half in Wednesday’s Providence game.
Hurley said he wants to see “a nastiness” from Clingan to “redeem himself” against St. John’s, where another one of the nation’s top centers, Joel Soriano, mans the paint.
“He’s got to be at his toughest and he’s got to play with some nastiness and some rage versus some guys that play a really nasty, physical style of center in their frontcourt,” Hurley said.
Soriano, a graduate student, is averaging 16.6 points and 10 rebounds per game (most in the Big East).
What to know
Site: Madison Square Garden, New York
Time: Noon
Records: No. 1 UConn: 19-2 (9-1 Big East), St. John’s: 13-8 (5-5 Big East)
Series history: St. John’s leads, 37-32
Last meeting: Dec. 23, 2023 – UConn 69, St. John’s 65 at the XL Center
TV: FS1 – Tim Brando and Jim Jackson
Radio: UConn Sports Network on FOX Sports Radio 97.9 – Mike Crispino, Wayne Norman
Pregame reading:
