LAWRENCE, Kansas – After an incredibly entertaining top-five matchup on Friday night, a 69-65 loss to No. 5 Kansas at Phog Allen Fieldhouse, UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley thought about how much he’d like to schedule a top team at home.
UConn’s home schedule in this year’s nonconference slate does not include a single game against a team ranked higher than No. 229 by KenPom. Four of the Huskies’ home opponents – Stonehill, Mississippi Valley State, Manhattan and Arkansas Pine Bluff – are ranked in the 300s.
“Indiana, Texas, North Carolina, Gonzaga, Kansas, we’ll play Duke if they want to start doing home-and-homes,” he said after Friday’s thriller. “We want to play these types of home-and-homes, I think that they’re great for college basketball.”
Hurley responded to comments made by Bryant head coach Phil Martelli Jr. last week that implied UConn declined to play his team. Martelli indirectly, but obviously, called out the program – “There’s a team up the road that played tonight, who won a lot of games last year that we were trying to go to,” he said, adding that the program he was referring to was a “high-major” – for choosing to play New Hampshire on the same night instead.
Trying to fill the date, Bryant ended up settling for a home game against Division III Springfield College.
“We’ve talked to everybody, I’m talking to everybody,” Hurley said. “Because I got called out by the Bryant coach for not scheduling him, so I guess I’ll just start doing that (expletive).”
Back to Friday night, whether they had a choice or not due to the conferences’ scheduling of the Big East-Big 12 Battle, Hurley and the Huskies were not afraid of playing another blue-blood program in one of college basketball’s toughest road environments – a rare matchup of two top teams at this point in the season.
“When you’re a top-tier program and a big brand and a blue-blood and a national champion, you owe it to college basketball, you owe it to your fans, you owe it to the sport to go play these types of games in the nonconference,” Hurley said.
Bill Self, Kansas’ hall of fame coach, agreed.
“My personal opinion is this is what our sport needs,” Self said. “Because, in a time where we’re getting dominated by what’s going on with football and rightfully so, this is the only way that you can bring attention to our sport.”
As bowl games and college football playoff season begins,…
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