To promote the UConn-URI game on NBCSB on Monday 10/14 – Kayla Burton sits down with UConn men’s basketball head coach Dan Hurley to discuss his coaching style, his decision to stay in Storrs and the Huskies’ quest for a three-peat.
Dan Hurley and Joe Mazzulla both led storied basketball programs to another championship this year, with Hurley's UConn Huskies capturing the school's sixth title (and second in a row) in April while Mazzulla guided the Boston Celtics to Banner 18 in June.
Both also happen to be very intense individuals.
Mazzulla, who trains regularly with a jiu-jitsu instructor and seeks a competitive edge while getting coffee at Dunkin', said recently he hates the term "title defense" and prefers his team be in attack mode when the season begins later this month.
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Hurley, whose Huskies will play an exhibition game against Rhode Island on Monday, Oct. 14 at Mohegan Sun Arena to benefit Coaches vs. Cancer (6 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Boston), is similarly aggressive when it comes to avoiding a title hangover.
"The way we do things is championship-level, championship-caliber every single day," Hurley told NBC Sports Boston's Kayla Burton in an exclusive interview, as seen in the video player above. "Our mindsets, our behaviors, the way we go about our work, we're ready to defend our back-to-back titles like our lives depend on it."
Unlike Mazzulla, Hurley doesn't mind the term "defend." But we'd imagine the Celtics coach would be proud of how Hurley is approaching the challenge of repeating.
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"I know Joe's got a different mentality of like, he wants to be an aggressor with the Celtics this year, the attacker, 'We're not defending anything,'" Hurley said.
"We look at it in like a way where we're gonna defend it with our lives. Somebody's gonna have to rip it out of our lifeless hands this year."
That mindset might seem a little too intense for a group of 18-to-21-year-olds, but it's hard to argue with the results: Under Hurley, UConn became the first D1 school since Florida in 2006 and 2007 to repeat as champs. A three-peat would be a monumental task -- only John Wooden's UCLA teams of the 1970s have accomplished such a feat -- but Hurley hopes the high bar he sets in practice will pay off.
"There's gonna be no slippage, whether you're here for practice today or you're at a gameday shootaround," Hurley said. "Just the attention to detail, the intensity, the energy level, the pace, the tempo, the stress that I put under these guys in training sessions is extreme.
"When you train in such extreme conditions, you don't really have to get ready for the game when you get there. You just show up at the arena ready."
Check out Hurley's full interview with Kayla Burton in the video above, and tune into NBC Sports Boston next Monday at 6 p.m. ET to watch UConn take on Rhode Island.
