It was April 6, 1992, and Bobby Hurley was at the center of a blue-and-white maze of euphoria, CBS cameras rolling as Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and a gaggle of teammates, cheerleaders and the Duke mascot surrounded him, celebrating this once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment.
Duke had just defeated Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and the Michigan Wolverines, 71-51, to win its second straight national title, the first men’s college basketball team to capture consecutive championships since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty won seven straight from 1967-73.
Hurley, who averaged 13.9 points and 7.8 assists per game in the tournament, was named Final Four Most Outstanding Player. It was the sixth time in seven years since middle school his team had finished its season by cutting down the nets.
His younger brother Dan was a freshman at Seton Hall that year, averaging 2.8 points, 0.9 assists and 0.5 steals in 11 minutes per game. His team, Big East regular-season champions, had been sent home by the Blue Devils in the Sweet 16, a game in which Dan saw 10 minutes of action and didn’t score.
If anyone outside of Big East country knew about Dan back then, it was only because of his last name. It would have been nearly impossible to imagine Dan equaling his brother’s college basketball championship total then, but now, 32 years later, the younger Hurley is four wins away from celebrating his own once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment.
If UConn does what oddsmakers and a majority of bracket filler-outers expect and wins a second straight title, it would become just the second program since Bobby Hurley’s 1991 and ’92 Duke squads to do it, and the seventh all-time. It would entrench the Hurley family name, already synonymous with success, even further into college basketball lore.
“It would be four championships in our family name in the last 32 years, which is nuts,” Bobby Hurley told The Courant in a phone interview. “It’s kind of crazy to think about that.”
Bobby Hurley was, of course, a prodigy as a player– a standout at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, N.J., where his father Bob was a Hall of Fame coach, and point guard on teams that won four straight state titles and earned the No. 1 high school ranking in the country. Not only was he a McDonald’s All-American, he was co-MVP of the 1989 McDonald’s All-American Game with Shaquille O’Neal. He was the definition of a five-star, blue-chip prospect, a household name.
You could have forgiven Dan for being envious of his brother’s playing career, and even though a motorcycle accident in 1993 derailed Bobby’s dream of NBA stardom, he’s remembered as a college basketball legend. Dan, two years younger, wound up carving out a nice college career at Seton Hall, averaging 14.3 points and 5.2 assists in his senior year, but didn’t sniff the NBA. Instead, he got right into coaching.
Bobby, now head coach at Arizona State, believes that has given his brother an edge on the competition.
“I think he’s got natural instincts he’s developed since he was a little kid, being around the game his whole life. He’s been doing this so long that the decisions you have to make as a head coach are very natural to him,” Hurley said. “He’s highly competitive, he cares about his players, and he’s been able to really develop as a coach and maximize what he can get out of his players.”
Bobby’s playing career came to an end in 1999, as long-term effects from the accident limited his impact on the floor. He spent some time away from basketball, getting into horse racing and returning briefly as a scout for the Philadelphia 76ers in 2003. It wasn’t until Dan got the job at Wagner College in 2010 and convinced him to join his staff that he rediscovered his love for the game, and caught the coaching bug.
The two immediately helped turn Wagner around, taking the program from 5-26 the year before they arrived to 25-6 in Year Two. After moving with Dan to the University of Rhode Island in 2012, Bobby was hired as head coach at the University at Buffalo in 2013. By 2015, he had the Bulls in the NCAA Tournament for the first time. Power-conference programs came calling, and Bobby was hired at Arizona State that offseason. He’s been there ever since, though he’s yet to lead the Sun Devils past the Round of 64 in three tournament appearances.
Dan, of course, kept his head down and slowly built Rhode Island into a mid-major powerhouse. He earned the UConn job after taking the Rams to the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back years in 2017 and ’18, even sending home Trae Young and Oklahoma in his penultimate game at URI.
After years of watching Bobby have so much success, Dan has grabbed the college basketball world by the scruff of the neck over the last two seasons, to the point where San Diego State head coach Brian Dutcher referred to the regionals in Boston as “the UConn Invitational.”
Asked to compare the Huskies with his still-revered Blue Devils teams, Bobby sees some common threads. “It’s eerily similar to my situation. The first year it might have been a little unexpected for us to win it, and the second year though we were one of the favorites, playing with a lot of confidence, and that’s what I’ve seen most of the year from this UConn team.”
He also sees some similarities between his brother and Mike Krzyzewski.
“Coach K, we loved him. We’d run through a wall for Coach K. And he had tremendous belief in us too, which gave you great confidence because you knew that he trusted you. And I feel like most likely that’s how most of the UConn team feels about Dan. They know he’s all-in and invested in them and that he’s a fighter and a competitor and he wants these type of games.”
If the Huskies are able to become the seventh program to win back-to-back titles, it could put Dan on the doorstep of the Basketball Hall of Fame, where he’d join his father. Five of the six coaches who have won consecutive championships are also in the Hall, with Cincinnati’s Ed Jucker the only outlier. It’s a short distance from two titles to Springfield.
The enormity of it all isn’t lost on Bobby, and it’s clear there’s no one out there rooting harder for Dan than him.
“It’s so satisfying to just watch him cut the nets down and to see the run he’s been on,” Hurley said. “I’d just be really happy for Dan. I know how hard he works, I know what he puts into what he does, so I hope he can do it again.”