UConn males’s basketball coach Dan Hurley mentioned his spouse Andrea acquired “violently offended” when he was approached about probably turning into the brand new Los Angeles Lakers head coach, a response the coach considerably predicted after the Huskies gained back-to-back nationwide championships.
After defeating Purdue within the title sport in April, Hurley was instantly met with questions on his future at UConn and if there was any curiosity in his taking up the teaching place at Kentucky after John Calipari’s exit.
Dan Hurley of the Connecticut Huskies addresses the media after the Nationwide School Basketball Championship sport towards the Purdue Boilermakers at State Farm Stadium on April 8, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Pictures)
Hurley deferred to his spouse on these questions, joking that he couldn’t “afford a divorce proper now.”
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“Oh my God, Kentucky or wherever that is going to take her farther from New Jersey,” he mentioned of her response to the rumors on the time. “I imply, we simply went to Rhode Island, which I needed to drag her to, after which to Connecticut. I acquired her nearer. And now additional? I can not afford a divorce proper now, too. I simply began being profitable.”
Nonetheless, the Hurleys had not anticipated that an NBA job could be within the playing cards simply months later, when the Lakers moved on from Darvin Ham, who was fired after his second season with the crew, which resulted in Los Angeles’ first spherical playoff loss this 12 months.
Throughout an look on “The Dan Le Batard Present with Stugotz,” Hurley mentioned his spouse didn’t take the information effectively – a minimum of initially.
Andrea Hurley listens throughout a information convention after Dan Hurley was launched as Connecticut’s head coach in March 2018. (Mark Mirko/Hartford Courant/Tribune Information Service through Getty Pictures)
“She was crying at first. I feel initially, the primary couple days of it, she acquired violently offended and emotional, not like hitting me and stuff, not like ‘Get away from me. I don’t wish to take into account this. You’re torturing me with this unbelievable alternative, you horrible human being,’” he mentioned with amusing.
UCONN’S DAN HURLEY CLARIFIES DECISION TO REJECT LAKERS’ COACHING JOB: ‘I ALREADY HAD THE LEVERAGE’
“She acquired emotional like, ‘I can’t consider you’re bringing this – Our life is so nice. It is good. Our lives couldn’t be higher and now you’re bringing this s—.’”
Nonetheless, a fast journey to California seemingly left a superb impression on Andrea.
“She was unhealthy at first however then she warmed as much as it once we acquired on the market and she or he met [vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka] and she or he met [owner Jeanie Buss] and felt the climate. We drove round Manhattan Seaside and simply met the individuals although principally. And he or she noticed the imaginative and prescient of it. She was into it.”
Nonetheless, Hurley mentioned it was short-lived and the couple each “flipped again” to UConn after they returned residence.
UConn Huskies head coach Dan Hurley, left, walks together with his son guard Andrew Hurley, #20, alongside together with his spouse Andrea throughout senior day earlier than the beginning of the sport towards the Seton Corridor Pirates at Harry A. Gampel Pavilion on March 3, 2024. (David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports activities)
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He reportedly turned down a profitable provide, a six-year, $70 million deal, and it was a call that he mentioned “tears you up inside.” A part of the wrestle, Hurley defined, was inside – desirous to nonetheless show himself all these years later.
“I’m nonetheless haunted by my taking part in profession in a whole lot of methods by way of how upset I’m to at the present time by way of how that went for me at Seton Corridor. So I do really feel this monumental stress in teaching to type of make up for that in a method and to attain extra enormously due to the disappointment that can type of eat away at me each time my taking part in days are introduced up.”
Hurley and the Huskies are on the hunt for extra this season. They’re chasing a third-straight nationwide championship with the Huskies, a feat solely ever completed by the UCLA Bruins within the Nineteen Sixties and once more within the early Nineteen Seventies.
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