The Basketball Builder

South County Life Magazine – Nov. 13, 2015

By William Geoghegan

Dan Hurley wanted to be a lawyer. Summers in high school, he worked in a family friend’s law office. He went to Seton Hall University and started on a pre-law track.

“It wasn’t the right fit for me,” he says now.

Sitting in his office, you can almost imagine it — a lawyer whose eclectic basketball tastes explain the framed newspaper stories from Seton Hall, Wagner, Rhode Island, the memorabilia at the top of the dark wood desk. You can envision the competitive fire moving from the court to the courtroom.

But the coffee table gives it away. There’s a small pad of paper on top. The only note?

A sketched-out basketball play.

****

Hurley leans forward in his chair when he talks about his University of Rhode Island basketball team. He has been here a little more than three years, planting the seeds for a college basketball powerhouse that he — and a lot of people — hope will blossom this season.

“When I left Wagner, for me, it was about getting to a place where I felt like you could build the type of program that could compete for an at-large bid every year, to make NCAA tournaments and to consistently compete at the top of the conference,” Hurley says. “Last year, I think, began that point for us here.”

Nothing has come easily and the next step won’t either, but it’s what Hurley signed on to do. He’s a basketball builder, a natural even if there were times when he wasn’t sure. He credits Seton Hall coach George Blaney with setting him on the path. “The impact he had on my life positively, I wanted to try to be able to do that for kids,” Hurley says.

His father has been doing it for decades, impacting kids — and winning — as the coach at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, New Jersey, a jump shot from Manhattan. He owns more than 1,000 career wins and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010, just the third high school coach so honored. Both his sons starred for him: then Bobby went on to Duke University, Dan to Seton Hall. Their talent was good enough, their drive even greater. “If you grow up having the father that my brother and I had, everything was competition,” Hurley says. “Heated, heated competition. Stickball and Wiffle ball games that were supposed to kind of be our break in competition would turn into heated battles. The era I grew up in, if I got anything below an 80 on an assignment, a test, a quiz, I was scared to death to bring that thing home. That plays a huge role in your makeup.”

His drive and work ethic shape the foundation of his coaching style. As good as he is with X’s and O’s, his team last year won on grit. Teams are said to be the reflection of their coach. The Rams are the spitting image.

Hurley’s coaching career began at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in New Jersey, where, like his father, he built a high school powerhouse. He was there 10 years before climbing to the college ranks at Wagner. After three seasons, he headed for Kingston, ready for another construction project.

URI went 8-21 in his first season, 14-18 while showing positive signs the next. Last season, the Rams emerged as an Atlantic 10 conference contender, finishing 23-10 and playing in the National Invitation Tournament. “I understood the situation,” Hurley says. “That doesn’t mean I wore it well. But we’re beyond that now. I understand at both places I’ve been — Rhode Island and Wagner were very similar situations — so when I got to those places, I knew it was going to be a struggle early on. But once we turned it, there would be an opportunity to have long-term success. For me, that’s what’s exciting about this situation here. We’ve got good young players who have gotten older, but we’ve also got good young people coming up in the future who are going to keep this thing going.”

There are few places in the college basketball world where successful coaches put down permanent roots. Hurley may not be in Keaney Blue forever, but he likes the future he’s crafted at URI. He can envision long-term success. Off the court, he and his wife, Andrea, and children Daniel and Andrew — now 16 and 14 — feel at home in Rhode Island. The family moved closer to campus, from East Greenwich to Saunderstown, in the off-season. “The players, the staff — we have a very close relationship with each other,” Hurley says. “To be able to have them close by to come over, when they’re not feeling well, or come over to shoot pool, to watch my Bengals play on Sunday. Whatever it is, it’s nice to be that close.”

Daniel and Andrew are around the Ryan Center a lot. Hurley calls Daniel a Renaissance man with wide-ranging interests, but on game days, he’s as nervous as his dad. Andrew has the basketball bug, and plenty of his father’s manic energy.

Basketball remains a family affair for the Hurleys. Dan and his brother, Bobby — now the head coach at Arizona State — talk at least once a day. The current season will be a big one for all of them, from Tempe to Jersey City to Kingston.

****

It’s the fourth practice of the season and Hurley is not happy.

“Better passing,” he says with a grimace.

“Play fast, Stan,” he says to Indiana transfer Stanford Robinson.

“Pass the ball,” he says after another ball is thrown away.

He bounces around, jumping into drills, watching every move. There is encouragement, but on this day, there is reality, too.

“Our details are not good right now, gentlemen,” he says as he lines the team up to run.

Hurley’s bio on the URI athletics website says he has never missed a practice in three seasons. He probably never will. This is where the work goes in, the manifestation of his drive. If the Rams are molded in his image, the practice court is where it happens. “He definitely demands a lot — you can see it at practice,” says junior Hassan Martin, one of the rebuild’s cornerstones. “He tries to get the best out of every single one of us, every single day. Down the stretch in the season, that’s what keeps us going.”

Sophomore Jared Terrell can remember his first practices last year, how hard they were. “Part of me was like, ‘This is a lot.’ But from hearing what the other players told me, I kind of expected it. You learn that’s what you’ve got to do if you want to be as good as you want to be,” Terrell says. “He’s going to push you. He’s not going to tell you what you want to hear. He’s going to tell it like it is and work with you to get better.”

Hurley calls this team his most talented, but he wants to see more intensity, more of the bulldog mentality that made the Rams so successful last year. With every dribble, every pass, every shot — and every sketched-out play on a tiny notepad — he’s pushing them, as he was always meant to do.

“The biggest thing that we’re trying to hammer home to these guys is that, although we felt like we had a great year last year and we started to achieve some of our goals, the reality is we haven’t done what we all came here to do yet,” Hurley says. “That has to be what drives us.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *