With UConn basketball on the verge of defeating Purdue and winning its second consecutive national championship Monday, Huskies head coach Dan Hurley removed his starters and replaced them with the lesser-played members of his roster, which includes Andrew Hurley, his own son.
Andrew is a senior walk-on who averages 1.5 minutes per game in his college career, but the minutes he is on the floor typically are victorious ones. As he typically comes in when the game is well in hand, in 43 career games Andrew has played in his career, UConn has won all 43.
Monday’s national title victory against Purdue was the 43rd such occurrence, as Dan put Andrew and other deep bench players into the game for the final 36.9 seconds. And as the shot clock was winding down, Dan demanded his son slam the ball just as he did to cap off last year’s UConn basketball national championship win against San Diego State.
Andrew has one year of eligibility remaining, but he said before the national final that he wasn’t quite sure if he was going to end up using it. He, like several of his family members, has an interest in coaching.
His father started coaching in 1996 after graduating from Seton Hall and has been a head coach at St. Benedict’s Prep, Wagner, Rhode Island, and now UConn. Andrew’s uncle and Dan’s brother Bobby Hurley was a very accomplished college basketball player at Duke who played in the NBA for five seasons. He later joined Dan’s coaching staff at Wagner and followed his younger brother to Rhode Island before becoming the head coach at Buffalo in 2013. After two seasons with Buffalo, Bobby became the Arizona State head coach, a position he has held since 2015.
Dan and Bobby’s father, Bob Hurley, may be the most accomplished coaches of them all, though. In 39 years as a coach at St. Anthony High School, Bob won 30 New Jersey state championships, 28 of which as head coach. Bob coached both of his sons, as well as numerous college basketball players and several NBA draft picks. In 2010, Bob was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, becoming one of only a handful of high school coaches to receive the honor.
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