KeaneyBlue - The URI Basketball Forum

This milestone, Coach Hurley’s 100th victory at Rhode Island, deserves its own thread.

......he has grown as an HC at this level.....he has grown into carrying the Hurkey flag into coaching, with necessary adjustments, he has delivered much of what he expected, he has delivered much of what we expected, the cake and its ingredients are still being worked on, the “frosting” is no where ready for the top of the cake(Reynolds reference), we are enjoying the Rhody journey with Dan Hurley, want to be around for the 200th....thanks Dan for the 100th.....

Let's all take a moment to think about what we each can do to ensure Dan wins another hundred in Kingston. Then do it.

Dan Hurley, the best thing to happen to RI since the Awful Awful.

What is amazing is the changes he made after that god awful loss to Fordham last year. He showed that he can change his game plan and doesn't stick to one plan. Go zone when you need to. Go big when you need to. Prior to that game he had one game plan. Now it has evolved into a dynamic that I am enjoying.

Milestones provide as good a time as any for reflection. Win #100 at Rhody, win #361 overall as a head coach.

223-21 at St. Benedict’s. Dan turned the basketball program into a national powerhouse. Previously, it was a good enough team at a remarkable school. He made that program and stayed loyal to it, turning down multiple college assistant coach offers and a head coaching job. Dan was a college assistant at a program in a major conference at age 24- the next typical step is not to go be a high school coach, but it’s what he wanted to do. I love that part of his career when he was teaching and coaching.

38-23 in two years at Wagner. This turnaround was much easier than at Rhody. The team was 5-26 the year before he arrived, but the program had never hit sustained rock bottom within its conference. He inherited players like Tyler Murray and Chris Martin and Josh Thompson. Still, they recruited strongly (Rivers, Ortiz, Williams, etc) immediately and got people talking about the program (shout out to beating Pitt on ESPN!).

100-77 in about 5 and a half years* at Rhode Island, 78-38 in the last 3 and a half years (is it cheating to drop the first two years? maybe, but we get it). Again, recruiting well from the start was key, and, of equal importance, was retention, especially since all they were left with was TJ after the seniors played out their last year. Year two, with freshmen EC and Hassan, was rough. In some other programs, given the success they had after their respective commitments in high school and their first year of college ball, guys like that leave if things aren’t easy right away. Speaks to their character and how good this staff, despite turnover, is at identifying the right type of people, on and off the court. As we know, they graduate so much this year, but they also bring in the best recruiting class in the conference. That’s how a program is built.

Congrats, Danny!

*and counting

I remember following Dan’s Rhody Win Loss record just to see when it would get over .500 after those tough first seasons digging out of the abyss. Seems like so long ago but it wasn’t.

What a great job DH is doing as coach . Very happy he is the coach here for hopefully a very long time