Reviewing the Tape - Dan Hurley on Dan Yorke's State of Mind on 3/31/17
When I first heard that Dan Hurley would be appearing on State of Mind on FOX Providence on March 31, 2017, I was looking forward to it. For the most part, I heard what I wanted - the cold, hard truth from Coach Hurley on his team from the 2016-2017 season, the team's future, and his individual future with Rhode Island men's basketball. Posted below, I have attached the entire 23 minute and 55-second-long segment:
After watching through the segment multiple times, I feel that it is appropriate to evaluate and break down some of the discussions that Hurley had with show host (and URI PA announcer), Dan Yorke. To begin, I appreciate the fact that Dan Yorke always asks Hurley, Ed Cooley, Bill Koch, and other sports guests on his show the hard-hitting questions.
By and large, I realized once more why I love supporting Dan Hurley as the coach of Rhode Island men's basketball. He is as pessimistic as I am as a person and especially as an individual that is involved in the world of sports. I am well aware that in a couple of previous articles (published on this very blog) that I was furious at Hurley's struggles at Richmond in the 2016-2017 season but that is to be expected when a sports team that you love is struggling mightily. Straight off the start of the television segment, the URI head coach said that he had never gone back to watch the film of team defeating Creighton but he constantly rewatched his team's tragic defeat to Oregon. I know what he means, I have done the same for every night since the Rams lost the battle to the Ducks in the Round of 32.
The only topic that I was not content with was some of the talk surrounding Hurley's potential move in the future to a bigger program. He blatantly acknowledged at the 14:47 mark that he is at top of the list for candidates that the Power 5 schools want to pick up. At the point and time in which Yorke asked about the amount of years that the coach guarantees that he will be around for a potential recruit's career, Rhode Island MBB's head coach diverted from the question. His response consisted of mentioning his promise to the Russell family and his appearance at (2017 recruit) Daron Russell's state championship game, where Russell won and "cut down the nets". Even if it was unintentional, I never felt like Dan Hurley accurately answered the tough question from the show's host.
In my eyes, Hurley never denied the possibility of leaving for a bigger program in the Power 5 conferences or even his interest in doing so. When he said that the players and potential recruits know "where I'm going to be", all I could think is no one currently knows where that place (he's referring to) is. Also, he said that the program is not at the level that he thought that they could get to when he first arrived in Kingston, RI. Based on that sentiment, I wonder if that means that he will leave the Rams once he feels as though they have hit the level that he expected from the day of his hiring. I voice my frustration about these theories because I do not want Dan Hurley to one day pull a Will Wade after a short time of success.
Around the midway point of the segment, he spoke about his goals of winning the conference, making the NCAA tournament, and his career goals. Appropriately, Dan Yorke asked if the coach believes that "It's okay to be great at URI." I do not think that you have emotions if you did not laugh at that brutally honest question. As most of the Rams fanbase is well aware, Hurley mentioned that the team will be returning one of the strongest group of guards in the nation for the 2017-2018 season. In addition to mentioning his "hungry frontcourt players", I find it interesting that he said that he has a little bit of work to do in recruiting. His verbage on the work that he has left to do in recruiting make me think that the final URI scholarship will be used soon and the final scholarship will be used on a frontcourt player. If my prediction based on this little wording is correct, then I approve the move.
If you know nothing about scheduling in college basketball, Dan Hurley gave perfect insight into a topic that I have a lot of knowledge on. The New Jersey native expounded upon his program's difficulty with scheduling quality mid-major teams like Belmont and Middle Tennessee State. I literally smiled when I heard the start of this discussion because when I was first aware that URI would be playing the Belmont Bruins at home in 2016, I was excited. Ultimately, the Rams ended up beating Belmont swiftly and for the majority of the regular season, their win over the Bruins was the second-best overall win that they had all season. Scheduling aggressively goes a long way towards getting into the NCAA tournament. I wish Rhdoe Island could play teams with the caliber of Belmont and Middle Tennessee State for the entirety of their schedule.
In his annual return to Dan Yorke's State of Mind, Rhode Island Rams head coach, Dan Hurley made me more secure as a fan of this team.
