NEWARK — Dan Hurley has spent the last four years building UConn into the meanest, loudest, most combative program in college basketball. For much of Saturday night's Elite Eight matchup against Duke, none of that mattered. His team was down 19. His players were shooting through a fog. And the Blue Devils, behind the Boozer twins, looked like the next national champion.
Then the second half happened.
UConn clawed all the way back, won the game on a Brilan Mullins buzzer-beater that Hurley himself called "a legendary March shot," and booked their third Final Four trip in four years. The comeback was so total, and the closing shot so absurd, that the UConn head coach — normally the first into a confrontation — reached for words like "justice."
"We probably will look at film and see shot quality on a number of the threes we missed and say, man, it felt like some type of justice," Hurley said. "We missed a lot of really good shots throughout the game and then we had to make a really hard shot. The things just evened out at that point, let's say."
Hurley gave full credit to Duke, a loss he acknowledged had ended the college careers of players he respects deeply.
"Obviously, just epic — another chapter in the UConn-Duke NCAA tournament dramatics," he said. "A really tough way for their season to end. I thought they played great. They punched us in the mouth with incredible force. The Boozer boys — I've been admirers of their approach to basketball. All I've ever watched these guys do is just win everything they play in over the course of their career."
The way UConn engineered the turn owed everything to a halftime message that swung from philosophical to physical. Down 15 at the break, sophomore forward Alex Cariban said Hurley's pitch was blunt.
"Piggyback off what AK said," Cariban offered, referring to teammate Terrace Reed Jr. "It was definitely that second half. Going into halftime, coach was like, 'Yo, we got to swing for defences, we got to give it all we can.' So coming out that halftime, down what — 15, whatever it was — just giving it our all, keep chipping away at the lead, and the rest is history."
Reed, who had struggled in the first half against Cameron Boozer's rim protection, said UConn simply refused to let their offence dictate their defence.
"I think it happened in the second half," Reed said. "We started being more physical. We started really playing to the calling card that we play at. We just felt like we let our offence really dictate how we were playing in the first half when we didn't have shots fall or the flow of our offence really got disrupted. When we took pride on the defensive end, everything changed."
Reed adjusted individually as well. Duke's double-team was swallowing him in the post through the first twenty minutes, so UConn's coaches reset his read in the halftime break.
"Going into the media timeouts, they were telling me, 'Yo, if they're going to come and double, kick out to the corners, but don't overthink it,'" Reed said. "Being able to take my time, seeing the whole floor, knowing they were going to collapse on me in the post — trust my shooters and trust the guys around me."
There was a moment, late, when Cariban had the ball with the game on the line and chose not to shoot. Instead, he dished to Mullins in the corner for the dagger.
"I saw Brilan, and for some reason I just had that gut instinct to pass it to him," Cariban said. "I looked at the rim and I saw we had like five seconds left. So I was like, maybe something better could develop. I had Cam Boozer in front of me, so a harder, more difficult shot. I passed it to Brilan, and when I saw him release, I was like, that really might go in."
Cariban's faith in Mullins was not a surprise to anyone who watches UConn practice. "Every time Brilan shoots, from no matter where, it looks like it's going in," he said.
For Duke, the ending will be replayed in an endless loop through a long offseason. Head coach Jon Scheyer, fighting visibly to keep his composure, took the full weight on himself.
"I could not be more disappointed, and feeling for our guys at the same time," Scheyer said. "I don't have the words. What I do know is literally this team — what each individual player went through just to play the game — I've never seen anything like it. What these guys did to have to get ready — their foot injuries, he's got a black eye, he's playing the whole game. I'm incredibly sorry for these guys that they got to go through this. This is on us. We're going to be in this together."
Duke's eight second-half turnovers were, in Scheyer's reading, the entire difference.
"We just gave them easy baskets, and we had to secure the ball better," he said. "That's a recipe to put yourself in that position, and that was a big difference in the game obviously."
The final possession — the moment before Mullins' shot — will be the one Scheyer replays most.
"We just have to secure it, right? We got it. They had a foul. I was ready for a timeout. We just got to hold on. It's easy to look at that play. I look at every play that happened, especially in that second half. This is not about one play. It's about every play to put us in that position. That's what you don't want to do, where one play something can happen."
Scheyer refused any exemption for the coaching staff. "There's not a person in this room, including me, that doesn't replay everything that you could do and how you can help. That's part of being in this seat. We'll reflect, we'll learn, do all that."
For Hurley, the win reaffirmed a belief he has talked about since day one in Storrs: nothing about UConn's recent dominance is accidental. Coming back from 19 down in an Elite Eight against Duke, he said, is only possible if the foundation is built months before the first tip-off.
"It takes strong men. It takes a strong team. It takes a tough team," Hurley said. "It takes a bunch of players that let us coach them, let us coach them hard. That starts in June. We run a very intense program. We stress them in practice. We put a lot of pressure on them on a daily basis to do the right things, to do everything at game speed, to do everything hard, to do everything tough, to be prepared. Because that's what it takes to win games like this, or to stay in a game like that where you're getting outplayed."
UConn heads to the Final Four. Duke heads home. And somewhere in a film room in Storrs, the Huskies' coach will be admiring an ugly, glorious, impossible game for one more day before he starts telling his players the hard truth — that the next one is always harder.
